


Plot Holes

by saltedpin



Category: Dissidia: Final Fantasy
Genre: Community: let_it_loose_df, Double Vaginal Penetration, F/M, Humour, M/M, Masturbation, Multi, Threesome - F/M/M, Voyeurism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-19
Updated: 2012-02-10
Packaged: 2017-10-29 19:10:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 24,521
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/323172
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saltedpin/pseuds/saltedpin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written on the kink meme for the prompt:</p><p> <i>Lightning notices that Kain and the Warrior of Light have been spending a lot of time together. Suspicious, she follows them, expecting to find them plotting against Cosmos, but instead she finds them having sex. In short; Kain/WoL with Lightning being a voyeur.</i></p><p> <i> AP Chance: Either Lightning actually gets involved, or she overhears the two guys wondering what it would be like if she was.</i></p><p> Updated with the requested sequels.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Apathy for the beta! All mistakes mine.
> 
> It also has a semi-continuation [here.](http://archiveofourown.org/works/460181)

If Lightning had been anything less than brutally honest, she might have tried to tell herself that she was not ordinarily this suspicious.

Things being as they were, however, she knew that was complete bullshit. She was pessimistic as hell regarding the better nature of her fellow creatures, and, she told herself, she was entirely justified in that opinion.

Lightning narrowed her eyes. They were at it again – whispering together at the fringes of the campfire's light, casting meaningful glances when they thought no one was looking. Sneaking away and returning under cover of darkness, creeping silently back to their individual tents so no one would know they had been gone.

She knew, though – she _knew_.

It all pointed to one thing – conspiracy. Lightning had no great opinion of Cosmos, either as a goddess or as anything else, but like it or not they were all in this thing together, and she would not have Kain and the Warrior of Light putting all of them in jeopardy with their plotting.

She didn't feel she knew either man well enough to guess how they might react if confronted with an accusation. Kain was a hardboiled mystery wrapped in a riddle and clearly liked it that way. As for the Warrior, at one time, Lightning could have sworn she heard his brain rattling around inside his head when he walked, but now she was sure that was just an act to mask his true, more sinister nature. In any case, common sense told her that confronting two large, armed men alone was never the best course of action.

Whatever they were planning, it was up to her to put a stop to it, that much was clear. If she couldn't confront them openly, she at least could find out what they were planning, and either counter it herself, or convince the others that Kain and the Warrior of Light had to be stopped.

Lying awake after everyone had gone to bed, alert to even the tiniest sounds, she waited, counting down the hours. The glow from the last embers of the campfire grew dimmer and dimmer – and then, there it was. She smiled thinly and without humour. Right on schedule, there was the faint rustle of the flap of the tent opposite being drawn open. Raising her head ever so slightly and almost straining her eyes to see, she watched through the thin wall of her tent as the barest silhouette, illuminated in the pale moonlight, made its way across the campsite. She had deliberately left her tent open enough that a sliver of the outside world was visible - just enough to watch as Kain Highwind, dressed for sleep, without his armour or helm, moved as silent as a cat over to the Warrior of Light's tent, the Warrior himself emerging the barest second later. They said nothing, simply moved silently away from the small ring of tents that surrounded the dying fire, into the darkness of the night.

Lightning waited, counting her breaths. Patience was imperative. She could not afford to get caught, not now. After what seemed like an appropriate amount of time – if only just – she crawled out of her tent, keeping low to the ground, fast and silent.

Mentally, she thanked whoever it was that had hammered her training into her so hard that tracking had become like an instinct to her; moving swiftly and silently part of her second nature.

Looking down at the ground, she had to wonder if they were so contemptuous of their so-called comrades that they simply couldn't even be bothered trying once they got beyond the confines of the campsite – there was no attempt to hide where they were going, their footfalls deeply imprinted on the dark earth before her.

She followed them along, gathering information as she went – they were moving quickly, Kain's longer stride and heavier tread on the left, the Warrior, faster and lighter on the right, starting off a reasonable distance from each other and slowly getting closer and closer, before –

Lightning's brow furrowed. Had one of them stumbled here and been caught by the other? The earth had been fairly churned up, the tracks converging suddenly, a jumble of confused footprints pointing every which way. Lightning stared at them a moment, her eyebrows drawing together. A scuffle, perhaps? Over what? She felt sure she would have heard it; she was not _that_ far behind them. Frowning, she shook her head. There was no time to ponder it; who knew what they were up to by now?

She followed on – the footprints told her they were moving faster now, but somehow managing to be even more careless, dragging their steps, walking closely together –

So engrossed was she in trying to figure the meaning of this out that she almost walked straight into them both. She leapt behind a convenient rock, instinct kicking in before her eyes had completely finished processing what it was exactly that she had just seen.

For a moment, all she could hear was her heartbeat ringing loudly in her ears, the nerves in her fingers and toes singing with adrenaline. She balled her fists, preparing to either fight or run – if either of them had seen her, she –

Wait.

What her retinas had scanned less than a moment earlier finally went careening up her optic nerve, coming to a screeching halt in her brain.

Her jaw dropping ever so slightly, she counted slowly to ten, waiting for the image to resolve itself into something that made even a slight amount of sense.

When this completely failed to happen, and neither the Warrior of Light nor Kain's enraged faces made an appearance over the top of her rock, she got slowly to her knees, peeking over the top of her impromptu hiding place.

Her eyes widening, she almost let out a tiny gasp. She managed to suppress it – not, the part of her brain that hadn't just gone catatonic with shock thought, that either of them would have noticed if she hadn't.

Kain had the Warrior of Light pressed against the stone face of a canyon wall, one hand in his hair, the other in the crook of his knee, pulling it up and over his hip. The Warrior, for his part, had his hands under the light tunic Kain wore for sleeping, his fingers digging so hard into the muscle of his back they looked like they were trying to embed themselves there; both of them were participating in what looked to be a very hot, very intense open-mouthed kiss.

As Lightning watched, Kain let go of the Warrior long enough to pull his tunic up over his head, letting it drop to the earth at their feet.

Lightning had to bite her lip – she would have had to be blind not to notice that Kain Highwind was a ridiculously attractive man, but until now her natural instinct to look had been buried under the suspicions she held regarding his intentions towards his comrades, as well as the fact he kept himself covered up beneath that heavy dragoon armour of his – tight-fitting and designed to accentuate every hard line of masculinity he possessed though it may have been. If Kain _in_ his armour was something to see, then out of it he was somehow even more impressive – even in the dim light, Lightning could make out every ridge, every dip and groove of his body, a column of battle-hardened muscle laced with the marks of training and real conflict. Involuntarily, Lightning licked her lips, then almost immediately wiped them with the back of her hand. Annoyance with herself crossed her mind – it didn't mean they weren't plotting something, just because they were also – also –

Wherever that train of thought was headed, it never reached its destination. Just because Lightning was partial to tall blonds didn't mean she couldn't appreciate anything else. Now, as she watched Kain slide his hands over the Warrior of Light's sides, pulling that tight black thing he wore beneath his armour up so it bunched under his arms, she wondered why exactly she hadn't spent more time appreciating _him_.

She swallowed heavily – while Kain was implacably firm and unyielding, the Warrior seemed to curve his body to fit him perfectly, moving between the solidity of Kain's body and the rock face behind him with an ease that Lightning wouldn't have credited to a man of his frame. She had, however, always assumed that the majority of his bulk came from the stupidly elaborate armour he wore, but looking at him now she realised that wasn't entirely the case – all the armour did was highlight what was already there. Somewhere in the back of her mind, Lightning thought that, whatever other beef she may have had with Cosmos, her taste in men was not one of them.

She supposed she ought to feel guilty for spying on them like this – she couldn't even pretend to herself now that she was waiting around to see what they might discuss when they got done with what they were obviously going to do. But she felt rooted to the spot, her muscles locked in place as if someone had cast Petrify on her. But it wasn't that she _couldn't_ look away – it was that she _didn't want to_. Even if she got all her memories back tomorrow, she was willing to bet something expensive that none of them contained anything even close to as hot as this, real or imagined.

That was the last thought she had before she noticed that Kain's thumb was hooked into the waistband of the Warrior's breeches. For a moment, Lightning didn't know where to look – at the waistband that was slowly sinking down over the Warrior's hips, or at where their mouths were still locked together – and that didn't even take into account Kain's other hand, grasping the small of the Warrior's back, forcing his hips forward against him and his shoulders back against the rock face behind. The Warrior seemed to have forgotten his own hands - they were raised next to his head, knuckles pressed back against the cliff, his fingers curled loosely over themselves. She saw him shudder as Kain's hand finally completed its descent, heard him moan, even though it was swallowed by Kain's mouth pressed to his.

Kain pushed the Warrior back hard against the cliff, his fingers wrapped around his cock, the Warrior of Light moving against his palm. Lightning found herself gasping in time with him, her body wanting to mirror the movement of his hips, feeling the phantom sensation of fingers sliding against her own skin. She was reasonably sure she had never been so wet before in all her life – not at any time since she had come here, in any case.

Unable to stop herself, she moved her hand down between her legs, feeling how soaked she was even though the material of her underpants. The first touch of her finger against her clit released a jolt of pleasure so strong she had to force herself to remove her hand again – she didn't want this to be over _that_ quickly.

In any case, she felt sure she was going to lose all motor control if Kain was about to do what she thought he was about to do.

He broke off his kiss with the arrogant snigger that had made Lightning think about pounding his face in until there was nothing left but a bloody crater so many times in the past she had lost count – though in _this_ context, she found it was driving her crazy for completely different reasons.

Kain had evidently decided to dispense with the preliminaries now and tugged down the Warrior's breeches, just enough to give him access. Lightning sucked in a breath: she realised that, somewhere along the way, she must have come to the conclusion that the Warrior of Light was like the dolls she vaguely remembered having played with as a child – nothing between his ears and nothing between his legs. Well, she had been proven wrong on at least one of those scores, she was happy to admit. Bizarrely - _perversely_ \- she felt almost proud of him – who would have guessed their fearless champion of light, who never seemed to think of anything much beyond new and interesting ways to lecture them all, would have something like that stashed in his pants? Slightly hysterically, a voice in the back of her mind said, _Kain Highwind, you are a size queen_.

She didn't have time to think about this any further, because then Kain, his hair shining dully in the moonlight, was crouching and moving his head southwards, while the Warrior gritted his teeth and buried his fingers in his hair.

Kneeling, Kain paused for a moment, and Lightning could see him lean forward slightly, pressing his face to the valley of skin below the Warrior's hip. She heard the Warrior make a half-strangled moan as Kain's hand came up, sliding across his thigh to roll under his balls, carefully holding them, before drawing back and taking his cock in his mouth. Again, the Warrior let out that same throaty cry, the sound forcing its way out between his gritted teeth. Even from this distance, Lightning could see Kain smile slightly, even with his mouth full, before pulling back, dragging his mouth along the length of the shaft, one hand pressed into the Warrior's hip, the other leaving his balls to wrap tightly around the base of his cock.

Lightning realised she'd forgotten to breathe only when the burn in her chest grew nearly unbearable – only to forget all over again as she watched Kain pull all the way back, his tongue rolling over the head and down the underside of the shaft, his lips standing out darkly in his face. The Warrior of Light's head was thrown back against the cliff, his hair flowing down his chest, seemingly insensible to anything around him. This time, the cry when Kain took him back in his mouth was anything other than muffled or attempted to be stifled – and again Lightning heard that infuriating little Highwind snigger she knew and thought she hated.

Far from the slickness between her legs, Lightning's mouth dried as she watched Kain's mouth go further and further along the Warrior's cock with every dip of his head, until finally he paused, his lips just touching the Warrior's groin, his throat muscles working. The Warrior wasn't making any sounds anymore – his jaw worked, but obviously something between his brain and his vocal cords had shorted out and no sound emerged.

Kain released him for a moment, only to dip all the way back down again – Lightning had to wonder just how deep his throat _was_ , anyway, and where exactly he had picked up his blowjob technique. Maybe she should be taking notes. Of _course_ the bastard would be as good at this as he was at everything else.

The Warrior thrust his hips shallowly, up into Kain's mouth – he didn't seem to _have_ a gag reflex, Lightning noted dryly – and then she saw Kain swallowing, once, twice, his hands pressing into the Warrior's hips as his knees tried to buckle, preventing him from keeling over.

It was only after Kain had swallowed it all that he let the Warrior of Light go, allowing him to sink to the earth, his breath coming in pants.

"My god, Kain," Lightning heard him say quietly, and there was something in those words, so breathless, so unguarded, so un-Warrior-like, that, even after the display she'd just seen, sent the blood straight to her groin. She brushed her fingers lightly over herself, feeling the pleasure ripple through her as she watched the two men lying together at the foot of the cliff.

It seemed like a long moment until Kain moved again – he muttered something that was beyond Lightning's hearing, and then heard the Warrior of Light respond with, "Of course."

She closed her eyes briefly as her fingers worked over her own skin, rolling her fingertips over her clitoris. She swallowed, darts of pleasure shooting down her nerves before she forced herself to open her eyes again – whatever happened next, she didn't want to miss it.

The Warrior of Light was still lying, as relaxed as she'd ever seen him – which was to say, looking even slightly relaxed, at all, ever – on his back. Kain kneeled up and leaned forwards over him, the hard planes of his body making him seem somehow predatory – predatory, but beautiful. Balancing himself with one hand on the ground next to the Warrior's head, he leaned down to kiss him again, slow and hard, his tongue seeming to fill the Warrior's mouth. His other hand followed the line of the Warrior's side, down over his hip and resting there, his fingers digging ever so slightly into his skin.

Breaking off the kiss, they spoke to each other briefly, speaking so softly and their faces so close together that Lightning couldn't catch anything of what they said.

Kain rose, reaching behind him into their pile of clothes and coming back with a potion. Lightning watched as he dipped his fingers inside the bottle, coating them well. For a moment, Lightning was torn – using potions, even a small amount of them, for anything other than their intended purpose didn’t sit well with her – they were stretched enough for supplies as it was – and she was pretty sure Cosmos hadn't given them to them so Kain could more comfortably fuck the Warrior of Light until he was a Warrior of Light-shaped hole in the ground.

She paused for a moment, thought back over what she'd just pictured, and decided that maybe she didn't have as big a problem with it as all that after all.

Swallowing thickly, she realised that Kain wasn't standing on ceremony. He'd already hoisted the Warrior's leg so that the back of his knee rested on his shoulder, and, judging from where his hand was and the shudder that ran through the Warrior, had begun pressing his fingers into the ring of muscle between his thighs. The Warrior of Light's back arched up off the ground, his stomach muscles bunching; a low whine escaped his lips as Kain worked his fingers in and out.

Kain, much to Lightning's chagrin, had kept his pants on up until this point. She licked her lips, waiting – too turned on now to worry about the fact she was behaving like an animal scenting its next meal.

Kain removed his fingers, and then, finally, lost the pants. Lightning let out an involuntary groan – she couldn’t help it, the thing was gorgeous – long, thick, and elegantly curved; even through the haze of her lust Lightning had time to wonder how the Warrior of Light managed to run around so much if he had that inside him on a regular basis, let alone look Cosmos in the eye ever again.

Whatever the case, she didn't have time to ponder it further – Kain dropped the Warrior's leg so it draped over his hip, pulling the other one up to mirror it. Then he slowly rocked forward, burying himself in one smooth stroke.

The arch of the Warrior's back was so sharp that Lightning momentarily imagined that he was in pain, but the look on his face put paid to that idea. Lightning could scarcely believe it was the same man who, a few hours before, had been vigorously chastising Bartz for nearly starting a blaze by drying his leggings too close to the fire.

Kain moved forward, his thrusts long and deep, the muscles in his arms and neck cording strongly against his skin. For a moment he paused, and then made one long, languorous roll of his hips that seemed to drag a moan straight up from the depths of the Warrior's soul. Lightning clenched her thighs together, feeling slick and wet; she'd never be able to wear these underpants again, she was sure, but even with their limited supply of clothing she couldn't bring herself to care. It was no time to think about such practicalities – she tore them off without a second thought. Trying for a bit of variation herself, she moved her hand over her belly, her skin jumping into goosebumps at her own touch, before sliding her fingers back down, holding herself, her middle finger simply pressing against her slit, feeling the slowly building pressure throbbing below.

She jumped back out of herself as Kain let out a low grunt – with some kind of ludicrous dragoon strength, no doubt, he'd pulled the Warrior of Light's legs up to rest on his shoulders, lifting the small of the Warrior's back up off the ground. Kain's thrusts became faster, harder, and in this new position Lightning could see him as he moved in and out of the Warrior's body, his strokes long and regular, and, if the noises the Warrior was making were anything to go by, finding the right spot every time.

 _Goddamn you, Kain Highwind,_ Lightning thought furiously even as she felt herself get wetter, as if that was even possible, _just… goddamn you_. She didn't even know what she was cursing him for now, apart from driving her half out of her mind with lust - _and goddamn you, too_ , she directed at the Warrior of Light, as he let out another one of those ridiculous and ridiculously hot noises she was pretty sure there wasn't even a word for.

She could feel her climax building within her – she wanted it so badly, and yet the liquid fire that seemed to fill her was so sweet, so _good_ that she never wanted this sexual limbo to end either – if she could have kept herself on the precipice like this indefinitely, she was pretty sure she'd never bother moving again. Kain and the Warrior of Light could finish what they were doing, clean up and wander over and find her, a melted, useless pile of lust, and she was pretty sure she wouldn't even care.

She was just about to give in to her baser, delayed gratification-hating instincts, when the pair in front of her decided to change positions _again_ \- Kain dropped the Warrior's legs from his shoulders and fell back on his elbows – he must have gotten tired or something, Lightning thought, because it seemed like the Warrior's turn to do all the work now, sitting up so he was kneeling over Kain's groin, his hands on Kain's shoulders, pulling himself forward onto his cock with the same hard strokes Kain had been giving him before.

Lightning had to admit herself just a tiny little bit in awe – she knew how often they had snuck off together - _plotting_ she had thought – but if they were having this kind of stupidly athletic sex every time they went off together, it was a wonder they had any energy left over to fight anyone. Let alone fight anyone _and then_ be a condescending prick (Kain), and lecture everyone until their ears bled (the Warrior of Light).

Still, she thought, as long as they weren't plotting everyone's imminent demise, she supposed she couldn't _completely_ disapprove.

Leaving these thoughts behind, she pressed on, so to speak, her fingers working hard now, the callous on her index finger building friction against her clit, the fingers on her other hand sliding just the tiniest bit inside her, pressing against the nerves that surrounded her entrance. A shudder ran through her and moisture ran down her fingers. Her thighs were soaking wet, and she pressed them together, trapping her fingers inside her.

 _Oh god,_ she thought, feeling a jolt run through her body that seemed to start at her knees and flow up out the top of her head. She silently prayed that the Warrior and Kain would finish up soon, because, as stupid as it was, she wanted to time her orgasm to theirs and if she didn't make herself come right this instant she was pretty sure she would –

Her thoughts were interrupted by what was possibly the longest, sexiest, deepest groan she had ever heard, and looked up to see that Kain at least had reached what she supposed was all three of their final destinations – he lay back, his elbows collapsing under him, refusing to support his weight any more. She saw the Warrior roll forward three more times and he too seemed to turn to rubber and collapse, leaning forward over Kain's chest, his sides heaving, his hair plastered to the sides of his face with sweat.

She didn't have much time to spend watching – suddenly, in a flash of light behind her eyelids, her bones turned to liquid and she fair collapsed, her forehead resting on the ground, hips and ass in the air like she just didn't care, a shockwave of pleasure running through her, sweet and hot, followed by tiny ripples that ran throughout her nervous system, chasing each other down, exploding over her skin.

For a while, the only thing she could hear was the sound of her own heartbeat. She could see her breath moving the dirt on the ground in front of her face, and, though it was the last thing she felt like doing, she sat up, her fingers a sticky mess, and wondered how she was going to get strength in her legs back enough to haul ass back to camp before either the Warrior or Kain did. Dully, she wondered if she actually cared or not.

It was the sound of her own name that brought her back to herself. Cold shock hit her in the chest, before she realised it wasn't actually being addressed to her.

"Lightning is growing suspicious," she heard Kain say, and all at once, her original purpose in following them here came back to her. Was it possible that – even after all of this – they were still – still –

Peering over the top of the rock again, she saw them sitting together, their backs against the cliff face, Kain's arm slung almost casually over the Warrior's shoulder. In some deeply buried part of her psyche, Lightning was almost touched – it was the most purely affectionate gesture she'd ever seen Kain Highwind give anyone, apparently insanely good blowjobs notwithstanding.

"But what does she suspect?" the Warrior asked, smoothing the black cloth of his tunic over his knees, apparently not so well-fucked that he couldn't fuss over _something_ , as unbelievable to Lightning as that seemed. She wondered what they did on days when they decided to go all-out.

Kain shrugged. "Who knows?" he said. "I'm sure she'll confront us with whatever she thinks it is one of these days."

"And then?" Lightning held her breath. She supposed this was the moment of truth.

Kain let out a small laugh. "We could always invite her to join in."

Lightning's stomach dropped through the floor. Was Kain being _serious?_ Did he mean 'join in' as in –

"If you think she'd agree," the Warrior said, still smoothing the cloth.

Whether Kain had originally meant the remark as a joke seemed to be lost on him, as all jokes usually were - whatever the case, Lightning noticed, Kain certainly didn't miss a beat taking advantage of the Warrior's total lack of a sense of humour.

"Maybe," he said. "We can always ask. When and if she decides to give a voice to her thoughts."

Grabbing the underpants she'd almost left behind, Lightning scuttled quickly back to camp, deciding that confronting two large, armed men with her suspicions about their terrible nocturnal activities was suddenly sounding like not such a bad idea after all.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Requested sequel to previous fill:  
>  _-Lightning masturbating while thinking about those two--and they catch her, which leads into the action_  
>  - _Lightning being proud of keeping up with them/taking them_  
>  - _Double vag penetration. Mmmmm_
> 
> Warning for no amount of realism whatsoever with that last bit! :) Or, you know, any of it.

Lightning supposed that one of the advantages to being a woman was having been able to spend the last week and a half completely barred up, and none of her comrades were any the wiser.

After creeping back to her tent that night after catching Kain and the Warrior of Light at what she supposed must be their little hobby, she'd lain awake, telling herself that she could go to sleep any time she wanted, but keeping an ear out all the same for their return to the campsite.

Infuriatingly, they hadn't returned for some time - long enough that Lightning _deeply_ suspected they'd hung around at the bottom of their stupid cliff for round two - and she'd eventually dropped off in the midst of rehearsing her 'so just where did _you_ two get off to last night?' speech in her head.

By the time she'd woken up in the morning, Tifa, Bartz, Zidane and Yuna were quietly eating breakfast, Kain and the Warrior nowhere in sight - Yuna told her they'd left early to go and inspect the Mirage Sandsea.

She'd gawped at the poor girl, her mind screeching _Inspect the Mirage Sandsea my_ ass, before stomping off without her breakfast.

Obviously, being encamped with five other people just wasn't affording them enough time to fuck each other stupid. And it wasn't even as if, in the Warrior's case at least, they had far to go on that score, she thought viciously, swinging her gunblade at one of the black rocks that littered the landscape. Telling herself that she was hardly behaving professionally did nothing - it was just as well she had often spent her time alone, because she had needed all the alone time she could get recently.

She supposed, if nothing else, in the past couple of weeks she had become a highly accomplished masturbator. In the past, her sexual fantasies had always been somewhat elusive, nothing that could be pinned down - just vague flashes of acts and situations, but very few identifiable names or faces. Now, they had solidified into something rock-hard, for want of a better term - that being Kain and the Warrior of Light in all manner of compromising positions.

She wasn't sure if it was good or bad that Chaos warriors seemed thin on the ground these days - on the one hand, without having seen a proper battle in ages she had no way of working off her nervous tension that didn't involve her creeping into the bushes and discarding her underpants; on the other, having so much free time was certainly no bad thing.

Fingers would only do so much, however. Apart from anything else, she was concerned at the possibility of developing a callous. She'd gotten desperate enough at one point to track down a moogle, for all the good it had done her - she still blushed mildly when she remembered its cherubic face, its eyes blinking apologetically at her as it said, "Don't know what a vibrator is, kupo, but I'm having a 50% off sale on pebbles."

It had not been her finest moment.

Of course, Kain and the Warrior hadn't told Yuna or anyone else when to expect them back, and the party had remained encamped in the same place, patrolling during the day and sleeping in their tents at night. Well, she supposed the others were sleeping. She was usually lying awake in a state of sexual torment, her fingers working over hot, slick flesh, writhing beneath her blanket, toes curling, biting her lip until she almost broke the skin.

This evening, however, the magic was simply not in the air. Perhaps it was Bartz and Zidane's double-act snoring in the tent next to her, or maybe it was simply that her fingers were too tired. Whatever the case, no matter how hard she worked, she simply couldn't come. She pulled out every single scenario she'd imagined since that night at the cliff face, each one a little more ridiculous than the last, working herself into a frenzy of lust -- but every time she stopped just a tiny bit short.

After one more failed attempt, she flopped back, curling her hands into frustrated fists and wondering if she'd finally killed her ability to orgasm altogether. Certainly it was the first time her usually failsafe fantasy of Kain bending the Warrior face-down over a rock (or something, she didn't really care that much), his lance finding a second calling as a spreader bar, had failed to get her off.

She huffed her breath angrily into the night air for a moment, thigh muscles twitching with unsatisfied lust. In the tent next door, Bartz noisily honked in air through his nose, followed by Zidane murmuring the word 'canary' in his sleep.

Irritated beyond the ability to sleep, she kicked off her blanket and yanked on her vest, her skirt and her boots. Grabbing her gunblade, she slid out of her tent, the skin of her arms goosebumping in the coolness of the night air. She had no idea why she thought this would work, or even if it would work at all, but she couldn't just lie here... not orgasming. Tip-toeing past the fire and out of the small ring of tents, she followed the path she had gone down two weeks prior, back to the original place that had started all of this. The tracks had long since been erased, but she knew the landscape well enough to find it again - that secluded spot at the bottom of the cliff, well-hidden from any intruding eyes. _Well, so they thought._ Lightning couldn't stop the tiny smile from spreading across her lips.

She sat down, back to the cliff, laying her gunblade beside her. After a moment, she lay down, unable to bring herself to care about getting dirt on her clothes, rucking her skirt up to her hips and sliding her fingers between her thighs. She was already so wet from her previous attempts that no prelude was necessary -- bending her knee, she found a notch in the cliff face and braced herself against it with her booted foot, her fingers moving over her slit, parting it and sliding inside. She arched her back slightly, her breath already beginning to come in pants, the pressure inside her building, low and sweet. She thought that perhaps the problem was a simple lack of variety - in all of her imaginings, Kain was always on top and the Warrior on the receiving end. This time, she reversed the situation, finding a disturbing amount of satisfaction in picturing the irritating smirk wiped off Highwind's face as the Warrior pushed slowly into him, muscles drawn tight as a bowstring, his hair lying tangled on the ground beneath him.

She gasped, feeling her cheeks flush. She drew her swollen bottom lip between her teeth, biting down gently, and brought one hand up over her body, pulling up her vest to cup her breast.

She supposed the advantage to fantasy was that it didn't really have to make any sense - in a flash, and with none of the messy flopping around that real life so often entailed (though in all honesty, she couldn't imagine these two doing _that_ even in real life), Kain and the Warrior of Light had changed positions, and this time it was Kain with his back to the cliff, rising and falling with the Warrior's thrusts, one leg wrapped around his back, his fingers curled deep in the Warrior's hair.

She was so close - she could feel that coiled spring in her belly just waiting to be released, so wet now that her fingers were struggling to find traction against her skin. Her neck strained, the back of her head pressed hard into the earth beneath her, her body on the brink –

"Well, well, well. To what do we owe this pleasure?"

Even as her brain registered who the voice belonged to, Lightning shot upright, one hand dragging her skirt down to cover herself, the other grabbing her gunblade.

"You -" she stuttered, her stomach dropping past her knees. _Of_ course _they would come back now,_ she thought, and of _course_ they would head straight back to their favourite date spot, as if they hadn't just spent the past two weeks fucking each other's brains out from one end of the fucking Mirage Desert to the other.

"Lightning?" was the Warrior of Light's probing follow-up to Kain's earlier question.

"No shit," she muttered, barely able to look either of them in the face. She was relieved of having to do that in Kain's case at least, his eyes invisible beneath his dragon helm. She was, however, mildly incredulous to see the Warrior gaping at her slightly, a bright red blush covering his cheeks -- as if he had no possible notion that grown-ups sometimes had the urge to love each other (or themselves) very much.

She supposed she wasn't being entirely fair -- it was not, after all, every day you walked in on someone masturbating whilst fantasising about, well, you and your stupid dragoon boyfriend.

Finally, she regained enough of her composure to lower her gunblade and attempt to look Kain in the part of his face that was visible. "What are you guys doing here?" she asked angrily, deciding that the best mode of defence was always attack.

"I would ask you the same thing, if it weren't so obvious," Kain replied, that incredibly infuriating smirk visible beneath the shadow of his helm. Lightning ground her teeth. She supposed she had walked straight into that one.

"I thought you were in the Mirage Sandsea," she said accusingly, suddenly aware from the drift of the Warrior's eyes that she hadn't _quite_ succeeded in pulling her skirt down far enough. She gave it a vicious tug now, and the Warrior looked away, a fresh blush spreading across his face. Lightning had to suppress the urge to roll her eyes.

"We were," Kain said, "but as you can see, we have returned. To quite the welcome back party, it would seem."

For a moment, Lightning thought about how vastly she preferred her fantasy version of Kain Highwind. That one, at least, didn't talk, except to say things like 'faster', and 'harder', and grunt incoherently from time to time. She was just beginning to wonder if it would be worth her while to storm back to camp and ignore them from now until whenever they all got out of this stupid world, when Kain removed his helm.

It was hard for her to remember just how much the man annoyed her when she saw him like this - it was even harder for her not to shove her hand back between her legs and finish what she had been so close to finally achieving before these two had shown up. Involuntarily, she licked her lips, her eyes ranging over him, aware that she was giving herself away entirely but honestly unable to care.

She was snapped back to reality by the sound of Kain's voice. "I suppose I should ask you whether your choice of location was pure accident, or if it has some deeper meaning," he asked, and somehow she got the feeling that he knew the answer already.

Lightning decided she wouldn't play his game any more - she knew, and he knew that she knew. The Warrior of Light, she wasn't so sure about. He was still blushing and averting his eyes, in any case, so whatever. "I know what's been going on between you two," she said, her tone halfway between placating and warning.

"I see," Kain said. "And you propose to do... what, exactly? There aren't any rules against fraternising with your teammates, Lightning."

She barely managed to hold back a groan when he said her name. For a moment, she pictured him in her mind's eye, sweat beading over his throat, _Lightning..._ slipping out from between his lips -

She swallowed, trying to focus. "That's not the point," she said, hoping he wouldn't ask her what the point _was_ , then.

True to form, he did exactly the opposite of what she wanted from him. "Indeed? Then what is?" His smirk had reached his eyes now. "What exactly was behind your decision to come here, Lightning?"

She swallowed again, dropping her eyes. Nowhere to go now but the truth, she thought sourly. "I saw you," she admitted. "The night before you left for the Mirage Desert. I thought you were up to something - plotting against Cosmos or -"

" _What?_ " the Warrior of Light elected to rejoin to conversation at this point, looking utterly aghast. "I would never - absolutely never -" he trailed off, apparently unable to even vocalise such a hideous thought.

"Well, obviously I know that _now_ ," she said viciously, scowling, and seriously tempted to add that he wasn't so dedicated to Cosmos that he minded taking Kain's cock up his ass on a presumably regular basis when he was supposed to be looking after his goddess' interests.

"What a horribly suspicious mind you have," Kain said mildly, leaning back against the cliff face behind him and crossing his arms over his chest. "I take it then that you're satisfied we have no plot against the goddess we both serve?"

"Yes," she ground out, wishing that the pair of them _had_ in fact been hatching a plot, and not entirely trusting herself not to tell everyone they had been anyway.

"And in other areas?"

"What?" she asked, raising her eyes to his face, honestly confused.

Kain's tone was measured. "Are you satisfied?"

Lightning felt her mouth go dry, and she swallowed thickly. "I - "

"Because this -" Kain made a gesture that took in her disarrayed clothes, the dampness she now realised must be visible on her thighs "- would seem to suggest otherwise."

Lightning swallowed again, her eyes flickering from Kain to the Warrior of Light. Denying anything seemed futile at this point. Kain was gazing at her steadily, his eyes hooded. She realised for the first time - oh _god_ \- that he was _turned on_ by all of this; she decided to assume it was from seeing her mostly naked and touching herself, rather than from listening to the sound of his own voice.

Two could play the game he'd started though - and she wasn't going to let him get what he obviously wanted as easily as that. "And if I wasn't?" she asked him, her voice cool.

Kain smiled, sniggering slightly. "Then I suppose we could be able to help you with that." He turned to the Warrior of Light, who had remained silent since his outburst at Lightning's suggestion that he'd been plotting. "Couldn't we?" he asked, and Lightning perceived a softness in his voice that gripped her heart in a way she couldn't have vocalised - from everything she had seen, including this most recent conversation, she had always assumed Kain was the leader in the relationship - but the way he now asked this... it was clear to her that he was very obviously asking for permission, and, had the Warrior said no, he would immediately have dropped it.

Lightning held her breath; for a moment, she saw something flicker in the Warrior's eyes, then he turned to Kain, watching him, before replying, "Of course."

Lightning wondered for a moment what kind of deeply weird dynamic they had going on, before her mind was taken over by what she'd just agreed to - wasn't this what she'd been fantasising herself raw over for the past two weeks? She swallowed, and told herself that if she woke up in the next few minutes and discovered this was all a dream, she would probably have to kill Kain, the Warrior, and herself out of sheer frustration.

Regardless of what and how many times she'd gone over this in her mind, she had to admit that she had no idea what came next - whatever memories she may have had to help her were gone. She wasn't shy, that much she knew. She knew what she liked. The idea of being with two men didn't intimidate her - even though she'd seen what they had and knew taking even one of them might be a stretch. Something told her that the Warrior of Light did not have a heap of experience with women, and as for Kain... well. What _his_ sexual history was like was anyone's guess. Briefly, she wondered which one of them had made the first move.

Pulling herself out of her thoughts, she realised that Kain was watching her quietly, presumably waiting for her lead. There was no way she was going to back out now, or show anything less than what she hoped was perfect composure. Straightening her back, she looked first him in the eye, and then the Warrior, before saying, "I guess we should get started, then."

Kan lowered his head in what she assumed was the mockery of a courtly bow ( _Oh, fuck_ you, she thought angrily), before turning to the Warrior. Lightning blinked for a moment, before remembering that both men were returning from a patrol and as such heavily armoured - she had no idea really how long it took to get that stuff on and off. In any case, she figured she was about to find out - the Warrior had set his horned helmet down on a rock, his white hair a tangled mess beneath it. For the first time, Lightning realised there was a tinge of red down his temple, streaking down through his hair - although the wound had obviously been attended to with a potion, she hadn't realised they had seen fighting during their time in the Mirage Sandsea. Just for a moment, she felt a tiny pang of guilt for assuming it had simply been one enormous fuckfest from start to finish.

She watched hungrily as the Warrior pulled at his gloves and slid them off his fingers, then unbuckled his bracers, setting them down with his helmet. His hands went to the long row of buckles along his flank that held his cuirass to his body, when Kain stepped up behind him, covering the Warrior's hand with his own.

"Let me," he said in a voice that was barely within Lightning's hearing; even though she knew she had been invited here and that she was wanted, she couldn't help but feel like the worst kind of voyeur as she watched Kain's fingers, strong, careful and dexterous, slowly slide each strap from its harness, moving down along the Warrior's side, the armour growing slowly looser around him.

Lightning had had no idea that undoing a buckle could be so hot. Honestly, she could have watched Kain slowly taking the Warrior's armour off forever, and, for a moment, she was disappointed in herself for never thinking of incorporating such things into her imaginings. In her defence, two weeks ago, if someone had asked her whether Kain Highwind was capable of such careful, sensual movements, she would have laughed in their face.

She was almost sad when the buckles were finished with and Kain lifted the cuirass away from the Warrior's chest and back. Although his face was hidden from her behind the mass of long white hair that always seemed to be a mess no matter what time of day it was or what he'd been doing, Lightning saw the Warrior's Adam's apple dip as he swallowed. Without the armour to cover it, she could see how quickly his chest rose and fell with his breath, and she wondered if this, too, was a regular thing for them - certainly, when you wore as much armour as these two did, incorporating its removal into foreplay seemed to be an inevitability if you ever wanted to get anything done in under five hours.

Kain had lain the cuirass down on the ground and stood up behind the Warrior again, his hands sliding forward over his hips, beginning to unlace the various ties and belts that held his tasset in place. Taller than the Warrior by a few inches, Kain bent his head down to his shoulder, and Lightning saw his teeth slightly bared, heard the Warrior gasp as he gently bit into the skin at the juncture of his shoulder and neck. She swallowed, feeling almost dizzy, her own breath beginning to come in pants - even in everything she had imagined, there was nothing, nothing that could compare to this, even if it was only the beginning. For a moment, she honestly felt she could watch Kain's lips move over the Warrior's neck for as long as Kain cared to keep it up, his hands still slowly unlacing his tasset, and she would be happy - at least until the insistent jolt in her groin reminded her that whatever came next could only be even better.

The belt and lacings undone, Kain pulled the heavy layers of armour away from the Warrior's hips.

Lightning couldn't suppress a gasp - with the armour gone, the effect of Kain's lips and hands was fully apparent, and even at half-mast he would have filled the curve of her fingers and palm, and for a moment it was all she could do not to move over to them and do just that. As tempting as it was, she stayed put - with a small, wry smile, she reflected that she must truly be a voyeur at heart.

The curve of the Warrior's muscles was clearly visible beneath the black tunic and breeches he wore beneath his armour, and Lightning drank in the sight of him, thinking again that no matter how many lectures he may have given her in the past, she could appreciate him on this level at least. Glancing at Kain, she was mildly surprised to find what she assumed was her own expression mirrored on his face. She saw his eyes flicker toward her, saw his lips twist into the kind of smile she had never before seen him make, and she wondered if he was sharing some private moment with her, a suggestion that, no matter what their differences, they did at least have this in common.

The Warrior of Light turned, raising his hands to Kain's pauldrons and beginning to undo them, then the straps of his breastplate that ran down his back. They were face to face, and he was only halfway done when apparently Kain could wait no longer and seemed to almost swoop forward, catching the Warrior slightly off-guard, and pressing their mouths together. Kain's arms, hampered slightly by the loose armour, wrapped around the Warrior's torso, dragging him into his chest. If his movements before had been full of the kind of soft sensuality that she never would have guessed him capable of, then this was all of the fire she had seen when she had stumbled upon them two weeks ago - his mouth was open, his movements absolutely demanding, his tongue filling the Warrior's mouth.

Lightning almost buckled at the knees - as it was, she leaned heavily back against the cliff face behind her, feeling again that slice of electricity that ran from her groin to her chest, her mouth watering. The Warrior had overcome his initial surprise enough to be pulling Kain's armour away from his body now, the kiss breaking only long enough to discard it: the chestplate, then the mail beneath it, leaving him in his light linen tunic - which was itself soon lying on the ground with the rest of it. Lightning felt that she would never get sick of the sight of Kain Highwind without his shirt on - the broad planes of his muscles and the sinew that knotted below his skin, even the dark scar that ran across his shoulders and down his abdomen - had she sculpted him herself she would not have made him any different. The long blond hair that was currently pulled loosely back against his neck was beginning to feather across his face, and in the moonlight, the hard cut of his features was softened - she had guessed that whatever secrets made him hold himself back as he did were nothing pleasant, and she wondered how many people had seen him like this: laid as bare as he was ever likely to let himself be.

In the meantime of her ponderings, Kain had manoeuvred the Warrior of Light far enough back to push him against the rockface next to Lightning - for a moment, she wondered if she had been forgotten, but then Kain turned to her, the lower half of his armour still in place, and held out his hand. After the smallest hesitation, she reached out for him, and he pulled her forward, one arm around her waist. Feeling the strength of it as it wound around her, she swallowed, her heart racing - for a minute, she thought he was going to kiss her, and she braced for impact.

Instead, smirking, he said, "Be gentle, Lightning," then he spun her around and pushed her gently forward so that she collided with the Warrior of Light's chest. Swallowing, she looked up at the ice blue of his eyes, wondering if this would be his first kiss with a woman. It didn't really matter, she supposed, kisses were kisses and sex was sex, and the Warrior had clearly had quite a bit of both, even if it was only from Kain, but still, she could not deny a guilty thrill at being someone's first, even as her brain told her it was, in reality, a distant second.

 _No time like the present,_ she told herself, reaching up to fill her hands with the heavy muscle of his shoulders, and having to stand on tip-toes to even get close to his mouth.

Lightning nearly gasped at the touch of his lips on hers – just the tiniest touch, as if testing the waters. She felt him withdraw and she opened her eyes to look at him, about to ask if there was a problem, and saw him looking over her shoulder at Kain standing behind her, something in his eyes that she could not quite pinpoint. Despite this, she was suddenly filled with the angry need to tear his mind away from the man standing behind her, to prove she was every bit as good as he was - though to be honest, she didn't have much data to hand to back that theory up. Whatever the case, whoever she'd been back home, she hadn't been a blushing virgin, and she was certain she'd picked up a thing or two along the way.

Pressing her thumbs either side of his jaw, she leaned up, kissing him hard, moving her tongue inside his mouth, knowing that she was not as physically imposing or as strong as Kain, but that she was more subtle, certainly, and more deft in her movements. She wrapped her arms around his neck, pulling herself up, her knee nudging along the hardness at his groin - and feeling with satisfaction that he was certainly at more than half-mast now. She turned her head slightly, teasing with her tongue, letting her teeth graze gently along his bottom lip. It wasn't until she heard that same groan she had heard him make earlier, the sound muffled by her mouth, that she felt the joyous stab of victory in her heart - she had him now, she was certain, and his arms came up around her, wrapping easily around her ribcage, pressing the hardness of his cock into her thigh.

She didn't know when Kain came up behind her, engrossed as she was with her current activities, but he certainly made his presence felt - even before she felt his warm chest press against her back, she felt the hard length of his cock nudge against her ass. She couldn't help but groan as she felt it, hot against her skin, even through the material of his breeches. Now that she was pressed between them she no longer needed both arms to support herself against the Warrior, and she reached behind her, wrapping her fingers around Kain's length, and having to pull out of her kiss in order to pull in the amount of air she required to deal with the excitement that suddenly coursed through her.

She knew what kind of stamina they both had from the evening she'd seen them at it - and, she reminded herself, she hadn't even caught the whole of that performance. Feeling how long and thick Kain's cock was, feeling it pulse in her palm, she wondered if she would really be able to match both of them. She was sure of her own abilities, knew she was strong and fit and could match either one of them in a standing fight - but take them both on at once? Even as she questioned herself - and had time to wonder if it was really healthy that she was all but equating sex with battle - she felt her head get light with the desire to find out. If anyone could do it, she told herself, she could.

Swallowing, she leaned her head almost back against Kain's shoulder; he turned his head to kiss her, differently, more demandingly than the Warrior of Light; if he had been content to let her take the lead, Kain most certainly was not - she couldn't think, every coherent thought driven from her head as his tongue entered her mouth, forcing her lips apart, her jaw straining to take him.

Kain's hands came around in front of her, running under her vest - if she had been able to make any kind of noise at all while he kissed her she would have gasped as he found her nipples, rolling them between the calloused tips of his fingers, his hands easily covering the whole of her breasts. She removed her hand from his cock (she could have sworn he made an almost audible groan as she did so) and wrapped her hand around the back of his head, burying her fingers in his hair, trying to force his tongue even deeper into her mouth. She was sure, memories or not, that she had never been kissed like this before, and she was damned if she ever wanted it to stop, regardless of where things might lead next.

She was so caught up in what Kain was doing that it took her a moment to realise that the Warrior had slid his arms down to her ass, and was beginning to kneel in front of her - she managed to stop kissing Kain for long enough to glance down, letting out an involuntary moan as she realised his intentions. While Kain held her up from behind, his hands still spread over her breasts, the Warrior of Light knelt in front of her, the backs of her knees over his shoulders, as he slowly, carefully moved her skirt up over her hips.

She wondered for a moment, in a glazed, breathless kind of way, if they had discussed what they might do with her on the off-chance they ever decided to make good on their post-coital banter to include her in their activities - certainly, this all seemed a mite too practised to be spontaneous. Having said that, she decided, she really couldn't bring herself to give a flying fuck, and leaned back into Kain's lips.

The first touch of the Warrior's mouth against the wetness of her slit sent a jolt through her so strong she arched and squirmed away from him - but his hands came up and wrapped around her thighs, keeping her in place, while Kain's hands tightened on her breasts, squeezing her nipples between thumb and forefinger. _Oh god, oh god, oh god,_ her brain repeated to itself, racing without a single coherent thought - and then she felt the Warrior's tongue part her lips, delving inside her, quick, hard, the flat edge running across her clit before flicking in a lazy circle around it.

She had never before heard herself make the kind of sound that belted out of her throat - halfway between a yell and a squeal, either way it was completely muffled by Kain's mouth. Her thighs twitched, trying to move against the securing strength of the Warrior's hands, and she wondered if she'd have to reassess her opinion that he hadn't been with a woman before now - there was no way, no _way_ , anyone knew their way that well around the womanly parts on their first go. Well, she supposed, it was entirely possible that he'd been attending the Kain Highwind Oral Sex Master Class in anticipation of this, but even so, all the theory in the world didn't make up for practise. She _thought_.

Kain pulled away from her lips (the ones on her face), and she saw his eyes flick over her face - she wondered how she looked now, her face flushed, eyes glazed, her hair a mess - and wondered if he found it hot. She groaned and leaned up for him once more, but he pulled back, his breath like a feather on her throat.

"I want to hear you, Lightning," he said, his voice husky and low in his throat.

She closed her eyes, feeling like velvet was coiling down every nerve in her body, digging her fingernails gently into the back of his head. Between her legs, the Warrior made another one of those rolls of his tongue and she arched up, caught between them, soundlessly crying out into the night sky. The next time she cried out was anything but soundless, her head rolling against Kain's shoulder as his left hand left her breast to slide down over the skin of her stomach, his fingers pressing into her navel, creating a taut line of pressure that ran over her belly, intensifying everything the Warrior was doing to her downstairs.

She had no idea how long this had gone on for - long enough to leave her thighs aching and her throat dry, but she didn't care if they never stopped. She was honestly insensible by the time she felt the Warrior of Light release her legs, Kain lowering her to her back on the ground - panting, she opened her eyes lazily and watched as Kain and the Warrior leaned over her. For a moment, she saw the flicker between them that she had seen earlier when Kain was ascertaining the Warrior of Light's assent to this whole endeavour, some signal that passed silently between them before Kain's hand came up to cup the Warrior's jaw, kissing him. Lightning could see her own wetness glistening on the Warrior of Light's lips and chin, and she wondered again how on earth he'd managed to do such things to her.

She thought, really, she ought to return the favour.

Sitting up slightly, she reached forward, her hand roaming over the front of the Warrior's pants - she felt his cock twitch against her hand, and she realised with satisfaction that he'd remained at least half-hard all the time he was going down on her. She realised too that there was something in her that was looking forward to this - maybe she had a problem or something, but her heart fluttered at the thought of trying to take the whole of the Warrior's cock in her mouth - and then, she thought, she'd do the same for Kain. It wasn't like she could play favourites or anything.

She slipped her hand inside his breeches, her hand moving along the whole length of him, more than she could hold even before he was fully hard, while her other hand tugged the waistband down over his hips. She swallowed at the sight of him, the vein that ran down from his belly to his groin standing out against his skin, the muscles of his abdomen tightly gridded. Lightning glanced up to his face and found him watching her quietly, acquiescently; she ran her thumb over the head of his cock and watched as he swallowed, pulling in a sharp breath. She glanced over her shoulder at Kain, who was watching them both with the smirk she knew well - but it was different now, softer, somehow, and, unlike the times he'd gotten that look on his face in the past, she had no overwhelming urge to beat him bloody over it.

Her fingers tightened around the Warrior's cock, and she was about to dip her head to take it into her mouth - into her throat - when Kain spoke up from behind her. "I'd not want you to enter into a competition you'd most certainly lose," he said, his voice smug.

Lightning whipped her head around to face him. " _Excuse_ me?" she said, incredulous.

Kain was smirking again, and this time there was none of the mitigating softness. "I'm merely pointing out, Lightning, that there's some things that I simply do better than you. And that -" he made a vague gesture crotch-wards "- happens to be one of them."

Lightning's blood boiled. She stood, storming over to where Kain sat. "You don't know that - I don't recall ever crawling into your tent and showering you with blowjobs," she said.

"There are some things I just know," Kain said. "And to be honest, I don't know that I would have accepted such substandard fare even if you _had_ offered it."

"You - " she pulled back her fist to strike him, before realising she was probably playing right into his hands. _Damn you, Kain, what game are you playing?_ she thought furiously, lowering her arm, but her fist remaining balled.

"Kain," she heard the Warrior of Light say from behind her, simply and mildly. She saw Kain's eyes move to him and then back to her, before he smiled again.

"You've certainly got your energy back," he said, his voice amused. "I think it only fair to warn you, you're going to need it."

Lightning felt her mouth go dry, but before she had time to come up with a witty retort like ' _You're_ going to need it, ass,' or 'Shut up', he had stood up in front of her and she found herself staring into the plane of his chest, and whatever she might have said died on her lips. Whatever anger she'd had with Kain shrank and died, replaced by the desperate ache of need. Between her legs she was so wet, but she felt empty. She almost wanted to lean forward and rest her head against him, to drink up his warmth and let it settle inside her, but she resisted the urge. There were better things to do.

"I'm sorry - I do believe I interrupted you," Kain said from somewhere above her, and she scowled up at his face, hating that he was so much taller than her - well, whatever the case, height wasn't everything, she thought, and she spun back towards the Warrior of Light, deciding that perhaps she _could_ play favourites after all.

Although she knew, of course, that the Warrior was intimately familiar with what she was about to do, she glanced up into his eyes anyway - she didn't know if he was usually this uncommunicative during sex, but she supposed she should have assumed he would be the same as he was in every other context, and generally keep quiet unless he had something to say about The Light. Seeing as she was pretty sure none of this had anything much to do with that, she guessed he simply couldn't think of anything to say. _Which figured._

Pushing her hand down between his legs again, she held her hand around his cock, her thumb and forefinger not quite managing to encircle it fully - obviously he found Kain being a complete ass a turn-on (which was probably lucky, she thought, seeing as that's what a fair 90% of Kain's time went into doing) because he was as hard as she had yet felt him, and she worked her hand slowly along his length, wondering how she was ever going to fit this much into her throat.

It didn't matter - after a moment she felt him pulse in her hand, his head falling back and the muscles of his neck cording, and she realised the only thing to do was try it. She dropped to her knees, pulling his breeches down over his hips again, her breath hitching in her throat as she came face-to-face with his groin. She swallowed again and glanced up at him - his face was invisible, thrown back against the cliff face, but she could see his stomach muscles clench, felt his thigh twitch beneath her palm, and she moved forward, opening her mouth to take him in.

Above her, she heard his sharp inhale as her lips moved over the head of his cock, tightly encircling it - the musky taste of him hit her tongue, not too strong and certainly not unpleasant, and she lapped along the underside of the shaft, her tongue working in slow strokes, sliding further along his length with every bob of her head. _Fuck you, Kain Highwind, we'll see who gives substandard blowjobs,_ she thought viciously, dipping her head, almost taking him in to the back of her throat. She felt his fingers suddenly curl through her hair, not too hard and certainly not a demand, and she smiled to herself as much as she was able, sliding back up and sucking on the head of his cock, her tongue working over it, her hand gripping the base tightly. The Warrior's hips jumped forward, and above her she heard his muffled cry - looking up, she realised that Kain had moved over while she was preoccupied and was kissing him, his hand over the Warrior's jaw, thumb stroking his cheek.

Despite the fact she currently had a mouthful of cock, Lightning almost blushed at the sight, looking back down - something in the gesture had been almost obscenely intimate, and to be honest she felt like she'd almost have preferred not to see it. Pushing it from her mind, she re-focused on the task at hand, releasing the Warrior's cock from her mouth. She took a breath and opened her mouth wide, sliding her lips along him and creating a tight circle of pressure; she paused, flattening her tongue and swallowing around him, feeling the slight jerk of his hips as she did. She pushed her head forward, her nose almost touching the skin of his groin, and felt him press against the back of her throat. She swallowed again, hearing him groan. He pulsed once, hotly, into her mouth, and she paused, managing to pull in a small breath around him, before sliding the last of the distance over his length, holding him against the back of her throat. She kept him there, her gag reflex under control at least for the moment, and then tightened her lips and _hummed_.

She wondered from the sudden jerk of his body if she'd actually managed to give him something Kain never had - she could feel the head of his cock vibrate against the back of her throat, his thigh muscles shudder under her palms. She slid back along him, looked up at his face and almost felt the breath knocked out of her - she realised now why Kain seemed to enjoy doing this so much, if it always resulted in this flush across the Warrior's face, his eyes shut, sweat beading across his forehead and sticking his hair to his throat and cheeks. If she had always considered Kain more her type, physically at least, she still would have traded him in if she got to see the Warrior of Light looking like this on a regular basis.

Dimly aware that Kain was watching her stare, she turned her eyes to him, and found his face soft with the kind of smile she had never thought to see on him, his eyes half-lidded, somehow almost glowing in the paleness of the moonlight. She licked her lips, looking up at him; then he gestured for her to continue, and she turned her attention back to the task at hand.

She didn't notice when Kain came around to kneel behind her until his hands were on her hips, his fingers feathering over the space between her belly and her thighs. She hadn't thought about the fact she was still wearing her skirt until she felt him unzip it all the way down, pulling it away from her. Her vest followed - she was wearing only her boots now, kneeling on the ground with her mouth full of the Warrior's cock, supporting herself by pressing her palms against his thighs. She gasped and momentarily released him, glancing over her shoulder at Kain when he pressed himself against her back, the hard length of his cock hot against the small of her back.

She found his face close to hers, his teeth just beginning to graze over the skin of her shoulder and she shuddered, realising now just how wet she was, and how deeply she ached for something, anything, to be touching her down there. As if reading her mind, Kain's arm slid around her, his hand moving over her belly. She jumped when his hand moved over her, cupping her groin entirely, his fingers pressing against her outer lips without penetrating them. She could feel her own pulse against his fingers and she moaned, shallowly thrusting against him, wishing he would _move_ , do _something_ \- but instead he simply held her, allowing that sweet, unbearable pressure to build, before finally, _finally_ , he moved the calloused tip of his index finger against her clit in a slow stroke.

She could not hold back the shout that left her lips - gasping, she had to break off what she was doing to rest her forehead against the Warrior of Light's stomach, her breath coming in pants. It felt _so good_ after all this time that she almost felt tears well in her eyes. She was utterly, utterly lost, forgetting even for the moment that she was still holding the Warrior's cock in her fist. She bit her lip, feeling Kain's other arm wind around her stomach and lifting her easily - even through the haze of what he was doing to her she realised what was coming next and felt her mouth begin to water. It couldn't have been a few seconds between his movements, but even so she had the time to mentally scream _Do it_ now, _you asshole,_ at him, before feeling him, hot and hard, beginning to nudge at her entrance.

She threw her head back, a silent gasp flowing from her lips - she may not have had any recollection of her past, but if she had ever felt this full, this perfectly stretched before, she swore she'd eat Vaan's stupid pirate hat. She arched her body, feeling him deep inside her, and even so realising he was not fully in yet - he was still holding her up slightly, and she struggled against him, wanting to feel the whole length of him inside her.

"For fuck's _sake_ , Kain," she managed - just - to vocalise, before she heard him sniggering close to her ear, and she dropped the rest of the way down along his cock.

The shuddering breath she let out was half a moan, half some noise she was pretty sure she'd never made before. Her buttocks sat flush to his groin, one arm around her waist and the fingers on his other hand still pressing against her clit. She felt herself pulse around him and she clenched her muscles tightly, feeling his thighs shudder below her. Pressing her toes to the ground she tried to start a rhythm of thrusts, aching to feel him move within her, and she was answered with a roll of his hips, strong, nearly brutal, and she cried out, her voice sounding foreign and far away, as if it were someone else altogether making the sound.

Through the haze of lust and pleasure, she heard Kain's voice, husky in her ear, saying, "Lightning... you've forgotten something," and she nodded, feeling almost in a daze, before opening her mouth and taking the Warrior of Light's cock back between her lips.

Even with her mouth so full, she still let out a moan every time Kain thrust up into her, his movements driving her lips along the Warrior's cock, pressing him deep into her throat. The Warrior's hands were tangled in her hair, not pulling and certainly not hurting her, his fingertips pressing lightly into her scalp, and, somehow, increasing everything she felt. Eventually, exertion meant she had to pull back from him, her lungs requiring all the air she could get, and she panted against his stomach, replacing her mouth with her hand, her fingers wrapping around him and jerking along his length.

Behind her, Kain groaned into her ear, his breath hot on the back of her neck. Dimly, Lightning found herself wondering again if this were somehow all a dream, and she'd wake up as she had so many nights before, absolutely soaked and with no way of doing anything about it except her hand - but then Kain subtly shifted position, striking her at a new angle, somehow even better than the last, and every even slightly coherent thought was driven from her head.

She could hear a voice that somewhere in her mind she realised could only be her own, crying out over and over again - she felt Kain's hand leave her clitoris, but the new angle he was pressing into her with made her hard-pressed to care. After a moment she felt his hand cover hers around the Warrior of Light's cock, and they moved together, their movements hard and fast, until finally Lightning felt the hot spurt of his come over her neck and throat.

She wasn't far behind him, her orgasm shuddering through the full length of her body, turning her bones to rubber - even after that, she felt Kain's fingers return to her slit, pressing against her clit, and releasing a second wave of pleasure through her, sharper, stronger, but somehow smoothing over the nerves that she felt had almost exploded from the previous one. She sagged forward, panting, her skin feeling too sensitive, aroused even by the coolness of the night air around her.

She wondered dimly if she'd ever be the same again, or if from now on she'd be just one giant, walking, talking erogenous zone, unable to do anything without getting turned on to the point of soaking her underpants - which was certainly the way she felt right now. Raising her eyes, she realised that the Warrior had sunk to the ground in front of her, his breath still heavy, his head to one side and his eyes closed. Again she felt pierced by the sight of his face, flushed, his lips swollen and dark red against his skin, and for a moment she felt a stab of jealousy towards Kain that he had gotten to see this so many more times than she had.

Speaking of Kain... she swallowed as she shifted against him, realising that he was still rock hard inside her. Sudden anger stabbed through her as she realised that he must have been smirking behind her back and simply waiting for her to get her breath back and become aware once more of the world around her, and that he _hadn't even come yet._

She squirmed against him angrily, wondering what exactly she had to do, anyway, and then guiltily realising that she'd been so caught up in her own pleasure she hadn't exactly gone out of her way to do anything special.

"Lightning," he heard his voice, deep and warm in her ear, "do stop squirming, you're not making this easy."

"What the hell's that supposed to mean?" she asked.

"It means," he said, his voice tinged with amusement, "that I'm not sitting here like this for _my_ benefit."

Lightning's breath hitched in her throat as she caught the implication of his words - despite this, she opened her mouth for a moment to say something like _Don't do me any favours, shoot your load, then,_ but quickly closed it before she had the chance, wondering if perhaps she actually did have some anger management issues that could do with being worked out.

She was expecting Kain to come out with some smartass comment in response to her silence, but instead it was the Warrior of Light who spoke. "You two -" he said, and she thought she could detect just the slightest amount of exasperation in his voice "- can you go five minutes without attempting to start an argument?"

Lightning harumphed, shifting her weight and feeling Kain pulse dangerously hard inside her, heard him stifle a groan. Her thighs ached, and she pushed herself up and off him, her arms barely supporting her weight as she leaned forward. She wondered vaguely what time it was and if they'd soon have to be going - dawn had not yet begun to lighten the horizon, and for a moment, she felt a slice of happiness in her chest that things weren't over yet, despite the ache in her legs and jaw and the satisfied throb in her groin.

"I'm sorry, are we keeping you up?" She ground her teeth at Kain's voice, wondering if he actually got off on goading her - all signs currently pointed to yes. As if to confirm her suspicions, he continued, "Because you most certainly may return to camp if you wish, I'm sure the two of us can find something else to -"

"Not likely," she muttered, sitting up, her muscles protesting only slightly. The Warrior of Light was leaning back against the cliff face, seemingly having fully recovered - Lightning couldn't stop the southward drift of her eyes, running over his chest, the grid of his stomach muscles and the sharp jut of hipbones above his groin. She wondered if she'd always been this insatiable, or if it was simply the company she was currently keeping. Whatever the case, she realised with a mild amount of self-directed contempt that looking at the Warrior and hearing Kain move behind her was beginning to spread warmth through her belly once again.

 _Farron, you're a mess,_ she told herself, her fingers going to her throat and sliding over slick come and sweat, and even so, could not stop herself from drawing her fingertips into her mouth, savouring the taste, and licking her lips.

She turned on her knees to face Kain, looking up at his face. There was no way she was leaving now - whatever they could do, she could do better, she told herself, the challenge there in her eyes as she looked at him.

Kain, as always, seemed to be able to read her perfectly and he moved forward, his hands on her shoulders, leaning over her to kiss her again. It was the same as before - the same hot, demanding tongue in her mouth; the weight of his body curving her spine ever so slightly backwards, his hands holding her where she knelt. She felt herself guided down towards the ground - she expected to feel dirt against her back, but instead she came up against the warm solidity of the Warrior of Light's chest, and she gasped into Kain's mouth, half in surprise, half at the feel of his cock pressing against her ass, hard again already.

The Warrior's arms came up under her arms, bent at the elbows, his palms resting against her shoulders. She broke the kiss with Kain to look over her shoulder at him, the ache in her legs forgotten, aware now only of the slide of their skin against hers, the wetness that was once again growing between her thighs. _This is stupid,_ she thought hazily as she turned her head back as far as it would go, trying to catch the Warrior of Light's lips with hers, _just how much sex does one person need to_ have, _anyway._ Stupid or not, her breath came ragged when she felt the Warrior press at her entrance from behind, beginning to slide slowly into her, that same feeling of completion and fullness making any attempted thought futile.

She was so wet, so ready for him that he moved into her easily. For a moment, she simply moved with him, rising and falling on her knees in slow, steady movements. She stopped kissing him to turn to Kain and watched as he leaned past her to the Warrior, hearing them kiss each other just outside the line of her sight. She groaned, feeling too hot, too breathless, and trapped in her skin - but at the same time unwilling ever, ever to let go of this. The Warrior began to lie back, his arms around her sides pulling her down with him until she lay, her back against his stomach, Kain leaning over her from above.

"What do you want, Lightning?" Kain's voice was soft, only slightly more than a breath against her ear.

"I -" she started, before the Warrior moved slightly beneath her, pushing against her just right, and she felt herself shudder, her thought uncompleted.

Kain's hand moved down over her stomach, catching her clitoris between two fingers. She shuddered, wondering if her eyes looked as glazed as they felt.

"Do you want more?" Kain asked her, his fingers against her, relentlessly drawing sensation from her nerves. Her breath almost rose in her chest as a sob when he pressed her hard, one calloused fingertip moving to her entrance, tracing it where stretched around the Warrior's cock.

 _More?_ Lightning thought, before it dawned on her. Her mouth opened slightly, about to tell him that no, she was full, she couldn't possibly fit both of them - before another voice in her head took over, saying nothing but _Oh god, yes, she wanted more, she_ needed _it..._

She swallowed, not trusting herself to speak, and then nodded, wondering even as she did so if she hadn't gone completely insane. Had she done this before? Kain gave her a searching look - she could not read his eyes - before he dipped his head to kiss her. He moved away, his lips still brushing hers when he said, "Tell me," he said, his voice as soft as she had ever heard it, "the moment you want me to stop."

She couldn't answer him, her throat constricted - she willed herself to relax, to release whatever tension she was holding - and then felt his fingers move against her, inside her, carefully preparing. Lightning closed her eyes, thinking nothing, feeling the Warrior's breath on the back of her neck hitching as Kain's fingers moved against him, too. There was no pain, just the feeling of being stretched, filled - and, somewhere beneath it all, pride that she could do this.

When Kain removed his fingers and she felt the head of his cock against her, she gasped out loud, her eyes flying open - so much bigger than his fingers, and so much hotter. He paused, barely inside her, waiting for some signal from her to keep going. The Warrior's arms held her balanced against him, so she raised her legs, wrapping her booted calves around Kain's hips, pulling him slowly into her. She hissed out a breath when he went too fast and he immediately stopped, unmoving until she squeezed him again with her legs. When he was finally all in she lay her head back, almost having expected more, but feeling stretched to the limit all the same - both of them were big, and for a moment all she could do was savour the incredible feeling of having both of them inside her, filling her, the knowledge that she had taken both of them as much a turn-on as the sensation itself.

She twitched, feeling that the slightest movement from either of them would trigger an orgasm, wanting it badly but not wanting this feeling to stop either. Eventually, it was Kain who moved first; a small, gentle thrust inside her that made her toes curl inside her boots, a soundless moan wringing its way out of her throat. Hazily, she could see Kain's face above her, his hair falling around them like a curtain, the muscles in his neck and shoulders corded tightly against his skin. He as holding himself up with his palms against the earth next to the Warrior of Light's shoulders, pulling himself forward into her body - it was hard work, especially considering everything else they'd already got up to this evening, but his rhythm didn't falter, and she bent her knees up, squeezing his hips between them, encouraging him.

The idea that Kain and the Warrior of Light could feel each other as well as her around them sent a sudden jolt through her and she cried out, her muscles shaking, her nerves feeling ragged beyond any further use - before Kain moved forward again, sending another wave of light through her, smoothing down her down and winding her up for the next one. She could feel the Warrior below her making smaller movements, nothing too strong, a simple complement to Kain's work, keeping to his rhythm, following Kain's lead.

Lightning felt her head fall back against the Warrior's shoulder, her breath gasping out of her in a way she was sure would have been very embarrassing had she been able to bring herself to care. She would have to come soon, she realised, simply because her body could not take this amount of sensation for too long - it was either that or explode from the inside out, screaming herself hoarse all the while, until she turned into a useless pile of jelly nothing. Here lies Lightning, she died from too much fucking. Really, someone should build a monument to her.

Kain had slowed his thrusts, evidently trying to draw things out - for his sake or for hers she wasn't sure, but having come twice tonight already she couldn't find it in herself to hold back. Aware of her own selfishness but hard pressed to care (after all, the pair of them had been getting plenty for months, whilst all she'd had was her imagination and humiliating trips to the moogles), she squeezed her legs around him, urging him to go faster.

Lightning opened her eyes, looking up at him, and, with the tiny amount of voice she had left, she whispered, " _Please -_ "

Kain didn't need to be told twice - he rolled his hips forward, burying himself deeply inside her. She cried out in something that was close to a scream as she could get, hearing the Warrior below her grunt as Kain's movements also ran along the length of him. Below her, he could feel his hips thrust up, his arm coming down from her shoulder to wrap across her stomach, pulling her down against him.

Pushing back against her legs, Kain straightened his back, his hips snapping forward, his hands grasping the backs of her knees and pushing them forward towards her shoulders. She had been wrong, she realised - _this_ was as close as she got to a scream, the angle of Kain's thrust hitting her just right, the Warrior beneath her matching him now, so far as his more limited range of movement would allow. She was so tight around them, so full, and she arched her back, feeling every muscle in her body go taught, her throat constricting so tightly that she couldn't even make the tiniest of sounds. She was aware of her jerk of her legs in Kain's grip, her head rising and falling against the Warrior's shoulder, and then nothing, light blossoming over her vision, her nerve endings singing, lines of fire running through her and burning everything in their way.

Lightning didn't have any recollection of what happened next, but she did find herself she-didn't-know-how-much-longer later lying on her side on the ground between the two of them, the curve of her ass settled into Kain's hip, her arm sprawled lazily across the Warrior's side, her forehead resting against his chest. She was too tired and filled with far too great a feeling lassitude to care when she realised they were actually having a conversation above her head - instead, she simply raised her arm and swatted at them vaguely until they stopped talking.

"Something you want, Lightning?" she heard Kain ask from above her.

"Shut up, you ass, I'm trying to sleep," she muttered, before feeling his hand catch hers, and, covering it, placing it back against the Warrior's hip.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Last one, in response to the request for _a sequel to this sequel dealing with aftermath and emotions and gah, is it me and my angst-tinged glasses that thinks Lightning would believe this is a one time thing?_

Lightning woke up, drifting lazily back into consciousness with a slowness she hadn't afforded herself in weeks, months, however long it was since she'd found herself in this ridiculous place.

Every muscle felt relaxed – even her _bones_ felt relaxed. Without opening her eyes, she stretched her arms and legs, and then winced as muscles that hadn't been given a workout – let alone such a strenuous one – in who-knew-how-long twinged in mild discomfort. She pressed her lips together, re-settling her limbs into a more comfortable position, then reached out with her hand, feeling for the warmth and solidity of the bodies she'd fallen asleep between.

Her fingers, however, closed around nothing but air. Lightning opened her eyes and sat up, wincing again at the stretch of her muscles, and looked around.

Low-grade anger began to burn in her chest as she realised neither Kain nor the Warrior of Light were anywhere in sight – she _knew_ Kain was a prick and the Warrior could be thoughtless, but to leave her sitting in the middle of nowhere, alone and without so much as her underpants on, seemed too much even for them.

At least, wherever they were, they hadn't gone far, she supposed – Kain's armour and helm were still where he had dropped them last night, though the Warrior's were gone. She swallowed and licked her lips as memories of last night came flooding back to her. The anger of having woken up alone leached out of her slowly. Futilely, she tried to hang on to it, mentally calling the pair of them every bad word she knew (which was quite a list), but it was hard to stay angry when remembering the feel of the Warrior of Light's tongue against her; how Kain's hands had done things she didn't think were possible for hands to do.

She was, however, miffed that they hadn't asked her along to… well, whatever it was they did after a long night of stupidly incredible sex. What with the pair of them being as weird as they were, one half of her didn't _want_ to know – the other half was insatiably curious.

In any case, she realised, before she could do anything else she'd need a good wash. She had to bite back a smile when she thought about what the looks on the others' faces might be if she wandered back to camp in her current state, clothed or not. Ordinarily she would have been outraged and disgusted to wake up and find dried come in her hair – now, horribly, she was finding herself strangely amused.

 _You've lost it, Farron,_ she thought, standing slowly and collecting her skirt and vest from where Kain had dropped them. In the daylight, she could see a small corridor of stone between the cliff faces, the dark earth of the plains giving way to the sandy soil of a riverbed close by. She followed it down, finding the water easily, a river that ran calmly between the mountains, shallow and secluded.

Lightning pulled off her boots and waded in, the water's surface warmed by the sun and drifting cooler around her calves as she waded deeper. Crouching, she grimaced as the water hit the stretched muscles of her thighs and groin, and she splashed water over her shoulders, trying to undo the worst of the damage and make herself at least part-way presentable.

Sitting in the water, Lightning found her anger at having been left alone came back to her more easily – with the languor of last night wearing off, it hit her again how vulnerable she had been left, no matter how close by either Kain or the Warrior of Light or both turned out to be. But below that, she realised with a certain amount of disgust that was aimed purely at herself, was a near-unidentifiable pang of… something, anyway, that she didn't want to examine too closely.

Lifting water up in her palms, she asked herself what exactly she had been expecting anyway – sensitivity from Kain Highwind? A morning of talking and sharing deep thoughts with the Warrior of Light? She almost had to laugh. Even if Kain enjoyed goading her and couldn't give her a straight answer to save his life, subtle he was not. The message here, she supposed, was loud and clear: _you've had your fun, now get out_.

Blinking suddenly, she hugged her knees, most of her anger now settling firmly on herself – she hadn't gone into last night with any sort of exit strategy, any idea what she wanted to happen when it was over. She had walked into the middle of something she didn't understand, to say the least. Swallowing, she recalled again the flicker of whatever it was that had passed between Kain and the Warrior of Light when she had first confronted them; of the strange, unsettling softness she had seen on Kain's face as he had undone the Warrior's armour.

The both of them tended to be almost wholly opaque in their emotions -- last night had been the only time she had ever seen Kain even slightly unguarded, and even then he had not been able to stop himself from provoking her to the point of viciousness; the Warrior of Light seemed to have so many doors within him that opened onto empty spaces, a total, yawning nothingness where human emotions and understanding ought to be. How they had any sort of relationship that went beyond the physical was beyond her, but obviously, somehow, they actually seemed to enjoy each other's company in ways that didn't involve penises going in holes.

Well, she _assumed_ , anyway.

Standing, she waded back to the shore, the sand curling up through her toes as she reached the water's edge. She inspected her clothes – not too bad, but not too good, either, but probably okay enough that no one would notice anything too far amiss -- before pulling them on over her wet skin, carrying her boots in her hand.

Slipping back along the stone corridor, she was alerted to the fact that Kain and the Warrior had apparently come back from wherever they'd gone by the sounds of their voices carrying down the wind to her. She couldn't make out the words, but it was unmistakable to whom they belonged. Going slowly, she leaned against the sun-warmed stone, peering around the edge of the cliff.

With a small pang, she realised she was back to where she had been two weeks ago, secretly spying on intimacy she could only imagine. Involuntarily, her fingers curled against the rock face as she watched. Kain was half-sitting, half-leaning against the rock the Warrior had placed his helmet down on the evening before, his armour still lying on the ground, his hair down; the Warrior of Light, fully armoured, his helmet balanced between his arm and his hip, leaned over him, his other hand on Kain's shoulder as they kissed.

Lightning bit her lip and almost drew back. If spying on them fucking had only made her feel slightly guilty, it was because that was all had it seemed to be – disconcertingly, the moment she had looked up from sucking the Warrior of Light off to see Kain kissing him, stroking his face with his thumb came back to her, and she remembered how grossly intimate it had seemed, and how she never would have expected it from either of them. Even as she'd been very much in the middle of things, at that moment she'd also felt like an interloper, seeing something she was never supposed to see.

Swallowing, she watched as the Warrior of Light drew back from Kain's lips, muttering something that she couldn't hear, before placing his helmet on his head and walking away without a second glance. Kain sat for a moment longer, not watching him go, before standing and bending down to the ground to pick up his lance.

Lightning hadn't exactly been paying attention to it last night, and she noticed now for the first time that the blade had been broken, the handle split almost down to the grip. Whatever had done that had obviously been a vicious blow, and again she thought with a slight twinge of guilt how she'd assumed they'd only gone off together so as to have more personal time.

"Lightning, you can come out now, if you wish."

The sound of Kain's voice jerked her straight out of her vague guilt, filling her up with the usual nigh-unbearable anger that no one she remembered had ever provoked in her before.

She came out from around the corner, her anger making her embarrassment at having been caught spying shrink into nothing. "Where the hell were you two this morning?" she asked, leaning against the cliff and shoving her now-dry foot into her boot with unnecessary violence.

Kain seemed unperturbed. "We were close by. Had there been danger, we would have been here to protect you."

Lightning rolled her eyes. "Save it," she muttered, buckling her boot. For a moment, she wondered if last night had really changed nothing between them – if they'd simply go back to the same cycle of verbal sparring and irritating each other as if nothing had ever happened. She gritted her teeth as her brain flashed the question _But what else did you want? What else did you_ expect?, and in honesty, she didn't have an answer for it.

"Where's Little Lord Fauntlefuck off too, then?" she asked, the profanity coming to her far more easily than answers to her questions, gesturing with her chin after the Warrior of Light.

Kain simply _looked_ at her for a moment; sometimes, she had to wonder just how much of what she said he actually understood, or whether he simply had to guess what she was on about from context. Certainly, to her, his own manner of speech had seemed so stilted as to be laughable. At first she'd wondered who he thought he was kidding, before she had realised that that was how he _actually talked_.

"Back to the Mirage Desert," he said eventually, having apparently discerned what she was after.

Lightning's forehead creased. "By himself? You're not – "

"I'm sure he can look after himself, Lightning," Kain cut her off, before leaning down to retrieve his breastplate from the ground. He slid it on over his arms, pulling it tight against his chest. Lightning's fingers twitched, and she remembered how she had watched the Warrior slowly begin to remove it the night before, until Kain had –

Blinking, she wondered how he'd react if she went over and began assisting him herself. Feeling anger bubble inside her, she realised he'd probably let her and then laugh at her, bowing his head in that exaggerated way she _knew_ was mocking her, and probably saying something like, _Why thank you, my_ Lady, with just enough emphasis to let her know he was being sarcastic. She remained where she was, anger draining the colour from her lips. _Fuck him,_ she thought viciously, and wishing that some small voice hadn't immediately risen up inside her, reminding her, _You did_.

"In any case," Kain said, turning his back to her and beginning the process of fitting on the rest of his armour, "there are only one or two Chaos warriors left to be rooted out of that place, and they are weakened. There is little danger."

Lightning watched him as he dressed, wondering if he truly intended not to mention anything that had passed between them last night – though, she recognised, she certainly wasn't going to bring it up without an in from him. She almost wished the Warrior of Light was still around. Either he'd be so socially inept as to say something like 'How is your vagina this morning, Lightning?', or he'd blush so hard that no one would be able to ignore it.

Leaning back against the cliff, Lightning watched Kain through hooded eyes, trying to figure out what to do next. She wondered if he had had a plan last night when he'd decided to invite her into whatever they had going on – if he and the Warrior had discussed it as idle speculation, as dirty talk to get each other going, but without ever having actually intended to do anything about it, and last night was pure opportunism on his part. The thought made her so angry she could barely breathe, even as she recognised that it had been the same for her, and she hadn't exactly gone into it with pure motives. For a horrible moment, she realised just how similar she and Kain were, and thought she might throw up.

"Shall we go, then?" Lightning was jerked out of her internal rage by the sound of Kain's voice. She looked at him, loathing growing in her chest, before she realised that he was holding a hand out to her to invite her away from the cliff face.

In confusion, she looked at him, then at it, her lip twisting. _What the fuck is he doing?_ she asked herself, halfway between reaching out for his hand and spitting on it, when he dropped it back to his side, both opportunities lost.

Lightning thought she saw something flash in his eye before he turned away, lifting his arms and going back into hiding beneath the shadow of his dragon helm, his eyes invisible.

He said nothing about allaying suspicion by heading back to camp separately; he didn't seem to care a whit what she did from now on, and simply walked away, leaving her to either follow or stay where she was. After a moment or two of internal debate, Lightning went after him, wishing she'd had the presence of mind to walk away first.

By the time she returned, Kain was halfway through giving the others an account of what he and the Warrior of Light had been up to during their time in the Mirage Desert – which was mostly, it seemed, tracking the Cloud of Darkness down and killing it, before uprooting Exdeath and hounding him until all three of them had run into Garland, which was when Kain's lance had been broken. The Warrior of Light had remained to fight while Kain returned to fix his weapon. The obvious omission almost made Lightning admire what a cool liar he was – though in fairness, he was not _actually_ lying, simply giving an edited account of the truth.

And in any case, she was pretty sure that nobody wanted to hear the version where he added, _Oh, and then the Warrior and I stumbled upon Lightning masturbating while thinking about us and our ridiculous sex life, so we all fucked each other and it was the best sex Lightning has ever had in her life, the end, it's pointless to even try any more_. Even if they _did_ want to hear it, she sure as hell didn't want him to _tell_ it.

Despite everything, when she crawled into her tent at night she still found bits and pieces of what had happened between them running through her mind -- to her intense annoyance she still felt that flutter in her chest, the same familiar warmth beginning to pool between her legs when she remembered.

She couldn't believe she was back here again, stuck in this same limbo of lust and desperation, as cut off from contact with Kain or the Warrior or anyone else as she ever had been. She wondered what kinds of things Kain had talked the Warrior of Light into if he had managed with no apparent effort to get him to agree to a threesome with her, and from there her imagination couldn’t seem to come up with anything dirty enough that they _wouldn't_ do.

Her fingers slid over herself, breath gasping, as she pictured the Warrior of Light standing with his hands tied behind his back, Kain's lance strapped to the back of his knees, Kain slowly exerting pressure with the sole of his foot until the Warrior was forced into a kneel – and usually, even that, without anything further (although she could imagine _plenty_ ) was enough to have her suppressing a moan as she came, and hoping that Kain couldn't hear her.

She would not go to him, though, she told herself – apart from anything else, who knew what arrangements he had with the Warrior of Light, or if, having had her, he even wanted her again. She wouldn't give him the satisfaction of knowing she'd been desperate enough to come to him.

Lightning was not even slightly prepared when it was Kain who came crawling into her tent one evening, when her fingers were still wet from having been between her legs for at least half an hour, pulling climaxes out of herself that were pale imitations of what she had experienced at his hands.

She jumped when she heard her tent flap pulled back, her gunblade already in her hand and pointed at his throat by the time she recognised who it was.

"Kain?" she whispered incredulously, lowering her weapon. "What the hell are you doing?"

"I'm _trying_ , Lightning, to sleep," he said.

"So are the rest of us. What's stopping you, jackass?" she muttered, lying down on her side and making as if to ignore him.

"You, over here, making all that noise."

Lighting's blood turned to ice. "What do you mean?"

He didn't answer, but Lightning could just imagine the roll of his eyes.

"Okay, fine, sorry," she muttered, feeling a flush spread across her cheeks. She hoped Kain was the only one who was awake, before deciding that she didn't care. It's wasn't as if no one else jerked off; most of her comrades were boys either in or barely out of their teens, for fuck's sake. It was just that Kain fucking Highwind was the only one who had to make a big deal out of it.

"Are you going? I promise I won't interrupt any more of your precious beauty sleep," she hissed at him.

She didn't know how he moved so fast inside the confines of the tent, but the next thing she knew she was pinned beneath his body, his lips finding hers in the dark, his tongue forcing its way down her throat. For a moment, she considered fighting him off or kneeing him in the nuts or something, but then she found herself returning his kiss, opening her mouth and bringing her hands up to his shoulders, dragging him down to her, her knee bending over his hip.

He was already hard, she realised, and she wondered if he had been like that before he came over, just from listening to her touch herself. He had to have known what she was thinking about, what was driving her actions – and yet, like the selfish bastard he was, he couldn't just stay put in his own tent and rub one out like a civilised person; he had to come crawling in here and complicating everything by kissing her like this, by pulling her hip up off the ground with one hand and tangling the other through her hair, and moving against her in shallow thrusts that caused _just_ enough friction to drive her crazy.

She groaned and could have killed him when he broke off, pulling back from her suddenly, his hand leaving her side as he half sat-up, a dark shadow in the moonlight.

"What are you doing? Keep going," she hissed at him, anger and lust overriding good sense. She writhed her body up to him, pressing her thighs against the hardness between his legs, but he still pulled back, sitting up fully and moving away from her, so much as the confines of the tent would allow.

She leaned up on her elbows, staring at him, wishing she could discern his facial expression in the dark. Hers, at least, was utterly incredulous. Had he actually come in here just to tease her? To see if she still wanted him, even after he'd ignored her, pretended that nothing had happened? There was nothing for it, she decided – she'd have to kill him. She'd tell the Warrior of Light he had fallen into a ravine or something and there was no point looking for the body, because by the time she was done with it there would be nothing left to find.

"Lightning," he said, and she swallowed at how thick his voice sounded in his throat. "I shouldn't have come here."

"No shit, if that's all you came in here to do," she hissed back at him, resisting the urge to kick him.

She thought she saw his eyes flicker contemptuously towards her in the dark, before moving away again. "It was a mistake, for which I offer an apology. I assume you could be gracious enough just once in your life to accept it."

Lightning's voice died in her throat. She frowned, feeling suddenly extremely angry. "Sorry I'm such a lousy fucking lay, then," she managed to get out, lying down and turning on her side. "Get the hell out. I won't be your crappy replacement fuck while _he's_ not around. I don't know what either of you see in each other, anyway," she couldn't resist muttering at the end.

She should have known he'd do no such thing and instead sit there like a stone, not speaking and certainly not getting the hell out. After a long silence, Kain said, "I trust him."

"Thanks for the vote of confidence in the rest of us," Lightning muttered, not turning over.

He let out what had to be the closest thing to an exasperated sigh that she'd ever heard him make. "What exactly are you trying to goad me into saying?" he asked in exaggeratedly polite tones. She didn't reply and closed her eyes, wishing he would either shut up or get out, preferably both, and quickly. "Is there something you're hoping to hear?" His voice was harsh. "What it's like when he says my name when I fuck him? Seeing his face when he comes, watching his mouth when he goes down on me? Is that what you want to hear about?"

Lightning had opened her eyes to look at him, if only, she told herself, out of surprise at hearing such foul language come out of his mouth. She'd never heard him say anything so much as a 'gosh and bother' or 'damnation!'. She stared at him, her lip curling slightly in what she hoped looked like contempt, but all too aware of the effect his words were having on her down below.

"I said I trust him," Kain said, his voice level once again. "But more to the point, he trusts _me_."

Lightning stared at him, the implication of his words sinking in. She swallowed, feeling suddenly very hollow. Humiliation throbbed through her and she lay back down, deciding this had been his last chance. Before she could stop herself, she spat out, "I can see why you'd want to hold on to that, then – there's only one in a million who'd be that fucking stupid."

To her mild surprise, he laughed quietly, but she could hear there was not much humour in it. "You may be right, Lightning."

He did actually leave after that, and Lightning lay awake for a long time, wishing every horrible thing she could think of on both of them, but mainly on Kain.

***

Lightning woke up angry most mornings, even without the memory of Kain having come crawling into her tent and making her life even harder than it was already.

In a way, she wasn't sure whether she wanted the Warrior of Light to stay away for longer than he had already or to just hurry up and come back – if she and Kain hadn't exactly been friends before this, neither had there been this frosty silence between them, so brittle she felt the air might snap if she actually made a move to talk to him. If the Warrior came back they'd probably disappear off together again. The thought made her grind her teeth, and not only in anger. She wondered how much of a boner kill it was to know someone who hated you was thinking about you having sex _while_ you were having it – she hoped it was a big one. In fact, she hoped Kain Highwind never got another erection again as long as he lived.

Despite her anger, some small part of her could acknowledge that she was not exactly blameless in this whole situation – she had rushed in without thinking just as much as he had, and it wasn't exactly like they had drawn up terms and agreements for the aftermath.

Thinking back over it, she realised, with a deadening feeling in her chest, that perhaps when he had held his hand out to her he had been trying to invite her into whatever he and the Warrior had, and she had failed to recognise the gesture for what it was and rejected it out of hand.

It hit her again just how different their worlds were – Kain came from a place in which courtly manners, formal speech and tiny gestures that contained a world of meaning predominated; she could never hope to read him fully, even as she recognised their similarities. She suspected, however, that even where he was from, he was not an easy man to get along with, and that he was considered emotionally reticent even by those standards. She wondered how her bluntness, her anger and her furies must seem to him. Even if he never spoke of them, she knew he had secrets that cut him more deeply than he'd ever likely admit. And who knew – maybe he was the same as her, and could not even remember what it was that drove him to hold everyone at arm's length.

Nobody behaved the way Kain did if they were 100 percent emotionally stable -- getting into a relationship of _any_ kind with him was just asking for him to bite the hand that fed him. With a jolt, she wondered if the reason Kain and the Warrior of Light got along so well was that the Warrior of Light accepted all his peculiarities because he simply didn't _know_ any better. She wondered if he even would have cared if she and Kain had actually ended up fucking each other that night.

The Warrior of Light was a blank – at least the others remembered something of their pasts, more or less, but he had nothing. Not a name, not even a hint of anything that had come before. If she had been adamantly suspicious of him in the past, it was because she had been sure that nobody could be as earnest, as guileless, and as straightforward as he seemed to be – she was inclined to throw 'brainless' in there as well. But now she was beginning to think it was not just an act after all, and he actually _was_ exactly what he seemed to be.

Just for a moment, she almost felt sorry for the Warrior of Light – she wondered if he knew that he had been caught between two snapping dogs, and, if Kain crawling into her tent was anything to go by, that Kain was only just restraining himself from breaking his leash altogether.

No matter how good the sex had been, how her mouth watered when she looked at him, Lightning had enough sense to realise that she and Kain together would be a _terrible_ idea. Kain was a mess, that much she knew. She understood it with the same instinct that told her that she didn't need her memories to know she was the same way – she'd rather lash out and destroy than make herself vulnerable, and she'd go the rest of her life without a meaningful connection rather than risk the hurt of breaking one. Somewhere, in the back of her mind, she remembered that she'd become this way to be strong enough to protect someone… but the memory was gone, lost with the rest of them, and she wondered if the only person she'd actually been protecting was herself.

***

When the Warrior of Light did eventually return, he was covered in a fine spray of white sand that stuck to the blood that coated him. Tifa and Yuna rushed over to him, but he quickly assured them that it wasn't his, removing his helmet and shaking the sand out of his hair. Lightning looked at Kain out of the corner of her eye and could have sworn she saw him swallow, the only sign of relief (she supposed that was what it was) he gave.

She wondered if Kain and the Warrior would now fall back into their old routine – would they even _care_ that she knew about it, or make any reference to what they'd shared?

After letting Yuna dab a potion on a cut across his forehead, the Warrior had left the campsite to head down to the river to begin washing the blood out of his clothes and clean his armour and weapon. Lightning swallowed, watching him cast a glance towards Kain as he walked away, and knowing she was the only one who had either seen it or knew what it meant.

Feeling a prickle on the side of her face, she turned and saw Kain looking at her sideways, his expression unreadable, but seeming to penetrate her right to the heart of her. He knew she'd seen the look the Warrior had given him, and perhaps was watching her reaction, some opportunity to taunt her with what she was being excluded from. Fury suddenly pelted through her – she didn't understand what he wanted, but she was so _tired_ of his games, of his obtuseness, and now, of his staring.

" _What?_ " she asked, turning and staring him full in the face. "If you've got something to say, Highwind, spit it out, but stop – stop –"

"Stop what?" he asked quietly, and she actually thought she might throttle him. Lightning glanced over her shoulder – Bartz and Zidane were not back from patrol and nowhere in sight; Tifa was showing Yuna how to kick a boulder in halves and neither was paying the slightest bit of attention to her or Kain.

Lightning took a deep breath, trying not to let her voice shake, either from anger or from anything else. "Just what are you after, Kain?" she asked, her voice low with rage, wondering if he was even listening to her, or if his mind was already off with the Warrior of Light, who was no doubt waiting for Kain to come and soap him down or whatever the fuck.

Kain turned his head to look at her, and she thought she could see something close to disgust glimmering in his eyes. "After, Lightning?" he asked, his voice completely cold.

She could have laughed. "Is that what it's going to be, then?" she said, raising her voice. She saw his eyes flicker towards Yuna and Tifa. "You're just going to pretend you didn’t come into my tent the other night, trying to wheedle me into fucking you before your shitty conscience –"

"Lightning, be _quiet_ ," he hissed at her through clenched teeth. "Have you no sense of –"

"Of what?" She was nearly shouting now. "Of honour? Chivalry? Whatever the hell it is that makes _you_ such a credit to the human fucking race?" She balled her fists, stepping forward. "Let me tell you, Kain, that if I thought we had one single thing in common, I'd –" She tried to continue, but found that her throat was too constricted to manage any more words.

"Finished?" he asked after a moment of silence, his cold eyes boring down into her. She didn't answer him. "As much as you seem to want to direct all the blame in my direction, I remind you that there were two other people present that evening." She opened her mouth to interrupt him, but he carried on. "You didn’t have to agree to anything. I _thought_ you were there of your own free will."

Lightning was rendered almost speechless in her anger – she didn't know _how_ he did it, but Kain always had a way of phrasing things that made it sound like _she_ was the one who had behaved unreasonably, who was the root of the problem between them, the one who had put up all the roadblocks. 

She thought again of the way he had offered his hand to her when she came up from the river, and wondered if _that_ had been his moment of vulnerability, an offered truce that she had rejected without a second thought. She wondered if it was a chance that would not come again, and she could not account for the sudden ache in her chest as she realised how different things could have been.

For a moment, she opened her mouth to ask him how _he_ would have felt if it had been him waking up alone, she and the Warrior of Light nowhere in sight, and with no explanation forthcoming about how or even if the prickly relationship between them had changed. She realised, though, that however she phrased it would make her sound so pathetic and needy she couldn't stand it. _Let them go, if they wanted to_ , she thought viciously. She didn't need either of them. She had been alone as long as she could remember - which, she admitted, was not very far back - and to become depedent on someone, _anyone_ , now was beyond intolerable.

Pain lanced through her chest, so strong and sudden that she almost felt her knees bend underneath her, and she wondered how things had gotten so far away from her – was she truly so afraid of getting hurt by someone else that she'd lash herself until her protective layer of scar tissue was so thick and so strong that no one would ever break through it? The worst of it was that, even if Kain had actually asked her, she couldn't have told him _what_ she wanted – he drove her mad, he and the Warrior of Light both; Kain with his arrogance, his condescension, his sarcasm and his insistence on keeping everyone at arm's length; the Warrior with his total obliviousness, strangeness, and belief that he was always, _always_ in the right. But to deny to herself, or to them, that she had wanted them both _so badly_ it had hurt would have been so obvious a lie it was laughable. If she had had any moment of peace since she had come here, it was in the tiny memory she had of the second before she drifted into sleep, Kain's hand over hers, resting against the Warrior of Light's side, nestled between them in complete comfort.

She wondered, truly, if _that_ had been the feeling she had been after all along.

"Kain," his name was out of her mouth before she could stop it, and even she could hear the pain that throbbed through her voice. She cursed internally – _why_ had she said that, what stupid part of her brain had let it slip –

She almost jumped in shock when she felt his fingers brush against her hand, the rough callouses on his fingertips touching the soft skin of her palm. She drew in a sharp breath – even so light a touch sent a jolt of electricity through her stomach – and almost drew away. With effort, she swallowed down her instinct to slap his hand away and storm off, and looked up into his face.

She didn’t know what she had been expecting, and truth be told he didn't look much different from usual, except for the fierce desperation in his eyes that almost knocked the breath from her chest. She realised that behind the ice cold of his façade, he burned so brightly that even he found it almost unbearable. The coolness was as much a mask as the dragoon helm he wore; she had long since guessed he wore it so frequently to hide his eyes from the outside world, but she had been unprepared for just how much of himself they revealed.

She wondered what had happened to make him the way he was, to make her the way _she_ was, and if the best she could ever hope for was this almost subsconscious acknowledgement that they were both damaged goods, and the knowledge that even if they went down with their claws hooked into each other's skin, at least they'd be going down together. 

Looking up at him, she allowed her fingers to curl around his, just the softest gesture. Something close to nausea welled up inside her, but she fought it down, holding his gaze, as their fingers interlaced. She wondered if she was allowing herself to fall into some trap of his – if he was simply seeing how far he could bend her to his wishes, and he was about to jerk his hand away and laugh at her yet again.

"Shall we?" His voice was so quiet that she almost didn’t catch it. She realised what he was doing, and where he was inviting her. She knew she ought to say no and to walk away, or to at least demand the setting of some ground rules first. If Kain was simply going to do again what he had done this past week as soon as they were done, then no amount of fantastic sex was worth it – but then his fingers curled against her palm again and she closed her eyes, turning to him and nodding, allowing herself to be pulled along to the riverbank, behind the shelter of the cliffs.

If the Warrior was surprised that Lightning had come with Kain, nothing in his face reflected it – he had apparently been waiting patiently by the river this whole time, and Lighting honestly had to wonder if anyone could truly be this placid, or if this quiet acceptance of everything was something that was reserved for Kain alone. Swallowing, she wondered if it was now extended to her, too.

The Warrior of Light had already stripped off the top half of his armour and his black tunic; the sand, it seemed, had got everywhere, and it seemed he had been in the middle of rinsing it off his torso when Kain and Lightning appeared. Lightning stopped, feeling self-conscious as she realised she was still holding Kain's fingers between her own. She almost pulled her hand away, but forced herself to keep hold – it may have been the smallest of gestures, but somehow it had now become an anchor for her, a suggestion of intimacy that somehow went well beyond what they had done before.

"Success?" She was jerked out of her self-conscious thoughts by the sound of Kain's voice, soft and low in his throat.

"Yes."

It was as simple as that, Lightning realised – without any further words, Kain left her side and walked down the bank to where the Warrior stood. She held his fingers for the briefest moment before letting them free; she was undecided as to whether to follow him, but then Kain turned back to her, gesturing for her to come.

She watched as Kain leaned forward to kiss the Warrior; she thought for a moment of the night he had crawled into her tent and wondered if this kiss was some kind of unspoken, unknown apology. Lightning certainly wondered if it felt as desperate and as hungry as it looked – the Warrior had had to lean back to absorb the force of Kain's movements, his back arching slightly. The muscles in Kain's neck looked strained, his hands on the Warrior's shoulder blades, holding him in place.

Perhaps she was simply reading too much into things – who even knew if Kain thought an apology was warranted; or the Warrior either, for that matter, if he had known about it. Kain was probably just glad to see the Warrior alive and back in one piece.

Twilight was beginning to creep down over the mountain range, the light fading to grey. Lightning wondered if the others would miss them, before pushing the thought from her mind. She watched Kain and the Warrior kiss with the smoothness of two people who had done this countless times in the past, who knew each other well – lips open, Kain's thumb running over the pulse in the Warrior's throat, his fingers spread over the nape of his neck.

No matter how angry she had spent the last few days being at Kain, at _both_ of them, Lightning thought she would never get sick of watching this, and certainly couldn’t imagine a time when it would fail to send the warmth of her blood straight between her legs. Already her breath was beginning to quicken in her throat, her heart beating so hard she thought it must be visible against her skin. She moved forward, hesitant to break them apart but unable to keep her distance any longer, her fingers moving down the bare skin of the Warrior of Light's shoulder, brushing away the grains of sand that still clung there.

She heard Kain break off the kiss and she turned her head to look at him, happy, for the moment, to follow his lead. Though he was not wearing his helm for once, but he was still in full armour – when he didn't make any suggestion she reached forward, beginning to unbuckle his pauldrons from the main body of his armour.

She was unfamiliar with the complex system of straps and buckles that held it all in place, and she wondered for a moment how either of them ever coped with all of this – stripping him was like stripping down her gunblade for cleaning, except that she could do _that_ in about three minutes flat, and have it reassembled besides. Despite the fact she'd obviously seen him naked before, removing his armour like this was like discovering something entirely new to her: there were dents in the armour she'd never previously noticed, and holes and chinks in the mail below where it hadn't been wholly protective against sword jabs and other blows.

When the mail came off and then the the tunic below it, it was almost a surprise to see the corresponding scars against his skin. Kain certainly had an impressive array of marks and scars, and running her fingers lightly over them, she had to wonder how he'd come by some of them – the lash marks against his back, the stab wound below his collar bone, the small white lines that ran like lace across his throat. Next to him, the Warrior of Light seemed almost pristine. The fresh cuts and small wounds of his recent fights notwithstanding, his scars were relatively few, except for one long line against his abdomen, and Lightning even remembered when he'd gotten that – with a jolt, she remembered, too, that it had been Kain who had carried him back to Order's Sanctuary half-dead, and it had taken all of Yuna's skill as a healer to get him into an even slightly decent state. She hadn't thought much about it at the time, but now she wondered if, even then, Kain and the Warrior had already been sleeping together, or if it had started sometime after that, catalysed by the Warrior's near miss.

These were questions for another time, she decided, her fingers hovering over the armour that covered Kain's lower half – glancing up into his eyes, she heard him make a tiny noise of amusement, before starting to remove the pieces himself. The Warrior of Light had removed his belts and tasset in the meantime and was quietly waiting for them, watching – she wondered what he was thinking about, for a moment, before her eyes drifted down and what was happening in his pants gave it away.

She smiled to herself, her hands going to her own clothes, unzipping her vest and then unhooking her bra, wondering if, for all their stupidly complicated armour, either of them could have managed that relatively simple task. She was about to bend over to begin unbuckling her boots when she felt Kain's arm around her back, pulling her into his chest.

His lips were hot against hers, his tongue filling her mouth. She couldn’t think straight when she was being kissed like this, and certainly couldn't remember how angry she had been and how much she had thought she had hated him just a few hours before. It was only made worse when she felt the Warrior of Light's fingers brush over the skin on her hips as he came up behind her, before his hands came around her body to her breasts; she gasped into Kain's mouth, feeling her skin rise into goosebumps, the Warrior's breath hot on the back of her neck.

She could feel both of them, Kain in front of her and the Warrior behind, and she could not hold back a groan as she remembered the feeling of being stretched and completely filled by both of them – as good as it had felt, however, the morning after had been somewhat delicate, and she was not in a hurry to try it again.

It seemed like Kain had other ideas, anyway. He stopped kissing her, looking into her eyes for the briefest moment before turning her around to face the Warrior of Light. She missed the feeling of being kissed so much that she immediately leaned up to him, trying to get to his mouth – the Warrior bowed his head and obliged her, his lips less demanding than Kain's, more reticent, but doing what she wanted all the same. Warmth flowed through her veins, settling in her groin. She could already feel that bright, familiar throb beginning to gather within her when she felt the Warrior's arms come up and wind around her waist, his fingers moving gently over her hips, her skin so sensitive to his touch that it almost hurt.

The question of where Kain had got to in the meantime was answered when she heard the small sound of a potion being uncapped from somewhere behind the Warrior of Light's back – evidently, the Warrior himself hadn’t registered the sound, because he shuddered forward against her in what she supposed was surprise at the touch of Kain's fingers against him. Over the Warrior's shoulder, Lightning could see Kain's smile. His eyes darted to her and his smile broadened slightly, as if drawing her into some secret plan. She saw the muscle in his shoulder move and the Warrior shuddered again, the smallest gasp escaping his lips, his eyes sliding shut, his fingers on her waist suddenly digging hard into her skin.

Feeling something against her stomach, Lightning looked down and realised Kain had also slid his hand inside the Warrior's breeches, his fingers working over him slowly. Swallowing, she moved her own hand down, covering Kain's fingers until he removed them. She replaced them with her own, giving the Warrior strong, slow, even strokes, feeling him harden even further against her palm. Kain continued in what he was doing from behind, and Lightning felt the Warrior shudder between them, nothing escaping him but the smallest sounds, until she finally gave him one, hard squeeze, and he cried out, muffling the sound against her hair.

She found herself backed against the side of the mountain that rose up next to the river. She was so wet by this time that when the Warrior's fingers eventually found their way between her legs they slid inside her so easily it was almost as if he had done nothing at all, except for the shock of electricity that ran through her body at his touch. She let him go for a moment and hitched up her skirt, her feet finding holds to compensate for their height difference, and then she pressed herself forward, feeling him against her, pressing just against her entrance.

Just before she felt him begin to slide into her, she wondered again how much of Kain's apparent decision to have the Warrior of Light be the centre of attention was derived from his guilt at having crawled all over her that night, or how much of it was simply that Kain had decided he'd rather fuck the Warrior than her – but before she had the chance to tell herself to shut up and simply enjoy herself for once, he was inside her, and it was all she could do to keep any grip in reality whatsoever, let alone speculate as to what Kain Highwind's mental state may or may not have been. For a moment, the Warrior simply held himself inside her, unmoving – she began to move her hips towards him in a shallow thrust, wondering what the hell was taking so long, before she caught Kain's glance over the Warrior's shoulder and realised what was happening.

She stopped in her movements, anticipating Kain's entry almost as much as the Warrior apparently was; closing her eyes, she almost imagined she could feel the same long slide of Kain's cock as she felt the Warrior shudder against her, his breath coming in short gasps. Lightning could feel Kain's fingers grasping the Warrior's hips against the inside of her thighs where they were wrapped around the Warrior's body.

Kain's first thrust seemed somehow to wash back over her through the Warrior, pressing into him and then into her, and she had to bite her lip to keep from making what she thought would have been a very embarrassingly loud noise. The Warrior's face was buried in her shoulder, his arms around her – it was obviously only with a fair amount of effort that he was managing to stand, with his cock buried in Lightning and Kain taking him from behind.

She squeezed herself around him, feeling the shudder that ran through him – and then, from over his shoulder, Kain's soft groan as if he too had felt it. She rolled her head back against the cliff face, feeling that all-too-familiar build of pressure in her belly, the tightening of her muscles. It was too soon, her body cried out, she had wanted this to last so much longer than this – but then her eyes snapped shut, and she began to see the bloom of light behind her lids. Next to her ear, she heard the Warrior of Light make that same noise she had heard that first night she had caught them together, something about it so hot that she writhed against him again, feeling him still pressing into her in time with Kain's thrusts, and it was all she could do not to kick out with her legs, so strong was the next wave of pleasure that ran through her, crashing down her nerves and making her see spots.

She felt utterly drained for a moment, until her third orgasm tore through her, not as strong as the first two but far deeper, leaving her feeling more satisfied, her legs going limp and her chest heaving against the Warrior's torso.

Through the Warrior's body she felt Kain push forward twice more before she heard him make that long, deep, satisfied groan she already felt she knew so well; and then she felt the pressure of the cliff face against her back lessen as Kain pulled out, releasing them both. The Warrior finally was able to sink to his knees, and for a moment Lightning was mildly concerned they'd honestly killed him – then she saw the flicker of his eyes beneath his lids before they opened, looking somewhat vaguely first at her and then at Kain, before Kain bowed his head to kiss him.

She watched them through the haze of her lethargy, her fingers stroking down the Warrior of Light's side, and this time did not feel like she was spying on something she hadn’t been invited to.

The Warrior was asleep within a couple of minutes, and Lightning couldn't honestly say she blamed him – she was teetering on the brink herself, the languor in her limbs and the release of a week's worth of tension wiping out any energy she may otherwise have had. But Lightning had to admit that hadn't even thought about how exhausted the Warrior of Light must have been, and with a pang wondered again if she really had any right to criticise Kain for selfishness.

Raising her eyes, she realised that he was watching her – she raised her eyebrow at him and saw him smile, not the smirk she knew but something closer to a genuinely affectionate expression.

"If you wish to talk about it, Lightning, I'm willing," Kain's voice drifted across to her, and she could hear the gentle mockery in his voice.

"Shut up," she muttered, balling her fist and giving him a light tap.

Kain laughed slightly, catching her hand, lacing their fingers together. Once again she was filled with the same confusion and near-nausea that had all but overcome her before. She wanted to pull away, but did not allow herself to. Swallowing, she realised that Kain was looking at her steadily, as if reading her thoughts.

Lightning swallowed. She knew that, alone together, she and Kain would have cut each other down to their cores, burning everything until there was nothing left of either of them. But here, the Warrior of Light moved like water between them, tempering and cooling, a foil to the anger she knew burned in both of them. She would never let Kain get away with any of the bullshit that the Warrior seemed simply to let pass over his head, and she knew, even as the knowledge irritated and repelled her, that she understood him – if the Warrior of Light could not hope to grasp his complexities and his contradictions, she knew she could, and, if she cared to, give him the kind of understanding he so obviously craved. And between them, they could ground the Warrior, pull him down from his disconnection, from whatever strange world he alone often seemed to inhabit, a world of lost memories and his distant, unknowable past.

She knew, she _knew_ that they had so far to go, that any accord that had been reached between them was tacit and fragile at best. Her issues with both of them were so far-ranging that she wondered if they'd ever truly reach a place of complete comfort with each other – but for now, she was willing to settle for this. Lightning dropped her eyes, pulling her fingers free of Kain's grasp and placing them on his hip, her arm draping across the Warrior's side. He stirred between them, and Kain reached his own arm across him to hold her as they lay down, three puzzle pieces that fit side-by-side together.

Closing her eyes, Lightning drifted into sleep, knowing that this would be one morning at least she wouldn't wake up angry.


End file.
